New Jersey breaks ground for Maternal and Infant Health and Innovation Center in Trenton

This article was updated Tuesday, July 22 at 4 p.m. to add a photo slideshow.

Tammy Murphy is about to achieve a monumental step in a fight that has spanned her entire term as First Lady of New Jersey: improving infant and new mother health and reducing mortality rates, and addressing racial disparity in access to care.

Ground is being broken in Trenton for the state’s first Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Center.She is the first to admit that the work is far from over, but this facility will hopefully be a game changer by providing access to quality healthcare for mothers and infants in a city that currently has no maternity ward after years of hospital closures and diminishing access to medical treatment.

About a month into her first term, Murphy spoke at a roundtable meeting hosted by U.S. Rep Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12) to discuss infant and mother mortality rates.

New Jersey was near the bottom of the list when it came to infant mortality disparity between Black and white children. The statistics at the time showed that Black babies were three times more likely to die in their first year than white babies. Black mothers were also more likely to die than white mothers during childbirth or the months after. Much of this was related to access to facilities and information.

“We simply cannot accept the increasing rates of pregnancy-related deaths, especially in a state which, for so long, has stood on the cutting edge of medical progress and the life sciences,” Murphy said during that meeting in 2018. “We cannot accept the fact that issues of maternal health and safety disproportionately impact women of color. We cannot accept the mortality rate for African-American infants that is three times that of white babies and a maternal mortality rate for African-American mothers in New Jersey that is five times more than their white counterparts. That’s unacceptable.”

“Being 47th out of 50 in the country in maternal deaths is just really alarming and a call to action. This is the type of moment that separates us as New Jerseyans. We must rise to the challenge and we must work collaboratively and we must really present solutions.”

Murphy recently sat down with The Trentonian to discuss the work that preceded the building of the new Health Innovation Center, and to talk about what else the state and stakeholders can do to save more lives.

“We still have a problem, there’s no question,” Murphy said to The Trentonian. “But the good news is, as shown by any number of metrics, … New Jersey started off at 47th in the country and we’re now 28th. That is, by any standard, really great in what was then six and a half years.”

While Murphy has been trying to combat this problem, she’s clear that the progress that has been made so far is only because of coordination within state government, and with outside stakeholders.

“A lot of people were doing great work, but they were not coordinated,” Murphy said.More than 70 pieces of legislation have been passed through what Murphy said were bipartisan efforts, noting that both sides of the aisle have supported this cause.

Seven years ago, there were two departments of the New Jersey government that signed on to help. Now there is support from 22 departments within the government as well as many stakeholders in the private sector.

“It started off with the Department of Health and the Department of Family and Children’s Services, because I thought, ‘Okay, we’ve got a problem. These are the obvious ones,’” Murphy said.The more they all explored the causes for the disparity in mortality rates, it became clear that more help was needed.

Access to healthcare was a large part of the puzzle, but a wide variety of factors came into play as they examined the data about what caused the disparity of results between Black and white mothers and babies.

“It’s everything from workforce development to education to transportation to housing toWi-Fi access,” Murphy said. “We’ve got corrections. We’ve got banking involved, Treasury, EPA. Everything you do and touch impacts the outcome.”

“You know, initially, a lot of people were very selective about what they would do and withwhom they would share their data, both within the administration and externally,” Murphy said, discussing some of the hurdles that need to be overcome at the beginning of the process.

“And I think breaking down all those silos everywhere and telling everybody, we’re a team.We’re only going to fix this if we all agree that every life is worth saving and helping andImproving,” Murphy said.

“You know, we’ve said it a million times, all boats rise together, and so I think being able to bring people along with us and being able to openly share conversations about tough topics and expose the data, that underscores the decisions we’ve been making,” Murphy said. “We’ve made progress because of it.”

“There’s a doctor shortage, there’s a nursing shortage, there’s a whole perinatal workforce shortage, and it’s coming at our entire country,” Murphy said. “So we have tried to be really smart about attracting people to New Jersey so that we can train them today to fill that void down the road. And one piece of the Maternal and Infant Health Center that’s coming is that it’s going to be an academic and perinatal workforce training center. And that’s intentional.”

In 2021, Governor Phil Murphy launched, with his wife’s help, a strategic plan with 80 actionable steps in the effort to make New Jersey “the safest and most equitable state in the country to deliver a baby.”

In 2023, the administration created the Maternal and Infant Health Authority, which Tammy Murphy said was the first of its kind in the U.S., with the upcoming Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Center as one of the final steps of implementing the strategic plan.

Murphy said their plan has already become a prototype for other states. She said a scaled-down version of their strategic plan is now housed with the National Governors’ Association so that other states can begin to tackle these problems.

Trenton was the clear choice for the first center, Murphy said, because the need is so severe and because the Capital City has been the location for many pilot programs leading up to the building of the new health center.

“It’s a birthing desert, it’s a food desert, there’s so much reason to focus here,” she said.The state has launched programs to bring access to doulas in Trenton.

The Family Connects NJ pilot started in Mercer County and has since begun expanding to a statewide program. That agency connects visiting nurses with new mothers to check in on them after they leave the hospital and monitors the health of mother and child, at no cost. It also helps families with information to access other resources that can help them to care for themselves and their children.

“Family Connects NJ is a major game changer here,” Murphy said. “It means that a lot more moms and babies are going to get off on the right foot and they’re going to have access to all of these resources that do exist in New Jersey right now.”

Much like the statewide scaling of Family Connect NJ, Murphy hopes the Trenton Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Center becomes just the first healthcare facility of its type throughout New Jersey and elsewhere, allowing the state to become an example of successfully providing equitable access to healthcare for everyone.

Originally Published: July 22, 2025 at 11:42 AM EDT