Cooperative's Chief Clinical Officer Featured in Statewide Article About Impact of Family Connects NJ Program

NJ’s nurse home visiting program for new moms shows early impact

Long-term Family Connects NJ funding unsettled as state expected to reckon with federal cuts

LILO H. STAINTON, HEALTH CARE WRITER | JULY 14, 2025 | UNDER THE DOME, HEALTH CARE

When maternity nurse Grysmeldy González visited a young Spanish-speaking mother in Trenton to conduct a free health check on her and her new baby boy, at first Gonzalez said she didn’t recognize the address.

But when the young woman’s sister-in-law brought her own six-month-old son out to say hello, González, the director of nursing at Central Jersey Family Health Consortium, realized this was her second trip to the home. Months earlier she had checked on the health of the sister-in-law and her baby too.

Both visits came through Family Connects NJ, a state-funded home visiting program available to all new mothers in 11 counties, regardless of their income, insurance coverage or immigration status. Nurses, program leaders and state officials say the 18-month-old, evidence-based initiative is making a difference in a state with far too many maternal deaths.

“With every family we see, we know we made a difference in that person’s care,” said Jennie Sherlock-Loeb, the chief clinical officer with The Cooperative, a nonprofit that provides maternal health in South Jersey including Family Connects. “As we expand and more families are reached,” she told NJ Spotlight News, “all of that support is going to lead to better outcomes.”

The early evidence

As of late May, state officials said more than 4,000 families had been visited by specially trained nurses who weigh and measure the baby, check the mother and child’s vital signs, answer questions and, if needed, connect the family with other services, like a crib, food assistance, air conditioning or mental health support, among other things.

Family Connects — the focus of a series published last year as part of NJ Spotlight News’ Change Project — launched in January 2024 in five counties and expanded to six more this year. Another six counties will be added starting in January with hopes of reaching all 21 in early 2027.

While the Family Connects model is being used in more than a dozen states nationwide, New Jersey is the second, after Oregon, seeking to build a statewide program codified in state law, something supporters say is critical to sustaining the initiative.

‘It’s word of mouth. This mom is telling this mom.’ — Grysmeldy González, director of nursing, Central Jersey Family Health Consortium

State officials say the benefits are clear. Three in four families visited so far were referred for additional support services, and 17% required urgent care, meaning a trip to the emergency room or a follow-up with their doctor. Issues with the mother’s blood pressure are most common, nurses said, along with surgical-site infections for women who had cesarean sections and breathing problems for babies. More than half of all maternal deaths nationwide occur in the postpartum period, after the baby is delivered.

“That’s 17% who could be lost,” Yashirie Benitez, a Family Connects nurse with the Central Jersey consortium, which runs the program in four counties, told NJ Spotlight News.

“We can be an example for the nation,” said Benitez, who herself benefited from a pilot version of the program when she gave birth to her second child, a baby girl named Brooklyn, in 2023.

Tammy Murphy’s input

Family Connects is the crown jewel in New Jersey’s Nurture NJ initiative, launched in 2020 by Tammy Murphy, Gov. Phil Murphy’s wife, to improve the state’s dismal maternal mortality statistics, which lag the national average. Out of roughly 100,000 babies born annually in New Jersey, state data shows 400 newborns die, along with 125 mothers.

Nurture NJ is also focused on ending racial disparities in a state where Black women are seven times more likely to die while pregnant, giving birth or soon after — and Hispanic women 3.5 times — compared to white mothers, according to the state’s most recent analysis. More than three-quarters of the mothers visited through Family Connects last year are women of color, state officials said.

“This program is literally saving lives and ensuring that no mother in New Jersey need go hungry, live in a dangerous situation, or struggle to find mental health support or essential resources like diapers and formula,” Tammy Murphy said in an email. “While it will take time to reach all families and to build the trust needed to ensure all sign up for the program, we are doing everything we can to raise awareness of Family Connects NJ — hope other states follow this lead.”

‘A vital safety net’

The Family Connects model — in place in 60 communities nationwide — has been shown to cut in half emergency room visits for mothers and infants in the year following the birth and reduce reports of anxiety, depression and child-welfare interventions, according to Family Connects International, the nonprofit that helps implement and support the program. New Jersey’s program could eventually pay for itself, some experts believe, by avoiding the need for more costly medical interventions, and several analyses of the program and its outcomes are underway.

State data from 2024 shows that of the visits conducted that year, nearly 45% involved Hispanic families, close to 24% were Black, almost 14% were white and some 9% Asian.

“Family Connects provides a vital safety net in the earliest days of a baby’s life — when risks to maternal and infant health are highest. By identifying needs early and connecting families to care, the program helps prevent complications before they become emergencies, reducing avoidable morbidity and mortality,” said Kate Shamszad, director of policy with the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, which has long advocated for maternal health improvements and is now assessing the impact of Family Connects, in an email.

But sustaining Family Connects in New Jersey could be a challenge.

Who pays for Family Connects?

So far, the state has invested nearly $50 million to build the program. The budget for the current fiscal year, which started July 1, includes close to $36 million, an increase of roughly $13 million from the year before. The state law codifying Family Connects calls for Medicaid, the state and federally funded health insurance program for low-income people — which already pays for 40% of births in New Jersey — to reimburse the nursing agencies for the home visits and support services they provide. But that coverage is not yet in place, according to those involved, so the work is funded almost entirely through the state budget.

In addition, the project will no longer have its most powerful champion — Tammy Murphy — as her husband leaves office in early January. The state created the Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Authority to oversee the Nurture NJ portfolio going forward, but the authority’s work has also been paid for by tax dollars. Plus, federal funding cuts by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress to Medicaid and other social service programs could leave the state cash-strapped in the years to come.

The state Department of Children and Families, which oversees the Family Connects program, has hired Johns Hopkins University to evaluate the program’s implementation and provide support for the state’s data analysis. The review is funded with $480,000 in leftover federal COVID-19 pandemic relief aid, the department said, and a report is due in September.

Who’s benefiting?

Feedback from participants has been positive, according to messages relayed by the department and the nurses involved. Parents praised the home-visit nurses for putting them at ease, listening to their stories, answering questions and providing welcome information on childcare programs and parenting support groups. One woman with high blood pressure said that without the nurses’ visit, she would not have known she was in danger.

“This gives the family an opportunity to ask questions,” said Mariekarl Vilceus-Talty, the president and CEO of the Newark-based Partnership for Maternal and Child Health of Northern New Jersey, which oversees the program in five counties. The nurses, she added, “give the patient the strength, the agency, to trust their gut.”

“This is a big part of bringing a baby home [wondering,] ‘Is this normal or not for a newborn?’,” added Emily Haines, the chief nursing officer with the Partnership, in an interview with NJ Spotlight News.

Family’s needs are not determined by their income, background, race or insurance coverage, Vilceus-Talty and others underscored. State data from 2024 shows that of the visits conducted that year, nearly 45% involved Hispanic families, close to 24% were Black, almost 14% were white and some 9% Asian.

Despite the positive feedback they’ve received, nurses said recruiting participants is not easy.

“When you have a baby, you need support,” Vilceus-Talty said. “Income and education are not a protective factor for Black women,” she added, noting that racial disparities in maternal mortality cut across all income groups.

Department of Children and Families Commissioner Christine Norbut Beyer said her team is very pleased with the program’s rollout so far. “Family Connects NJ, in a short period of time, has become an important component in our efforts to support family stability and success, and I look forward to continued support as we work toward statewide implementation,” she said in an email.

Recruiting participants is a challenge

Despite the positive feedback they’ve received, nurses said recruiting participants is not easy. State data shows that, over the first 15 months, more than 1,000 families were served in both Mercer and Essex counties, home to roughly 4,000 and 10,000 annual births, respectively. But numbers are far lower in other counties, especially those added this past January, including Hudson and Ocean counties, which reported 70 and 14 visits respectively, as of March 31.

“It’s word of mouth. This mom is telling this mom,” González told NJ Spotlight News.

Teams work with hospitals to try to enroll new mothers before they are discharged and also contact community organizations, pregnancy support groups, churches and homeless shelters to identify families who would benefit. When the program became available in Ocean County, González said she organized a meeting with leaders in the Orthodox Jewish community, which has a large presence in the Lakewood area, to help integrate Family Connects into the suite of services available for new mothers there.

Some hospitals have become program champions, like Virtua Health, in South Jersey, which has integrated the program with its electronic medical records to make sure perinatal nurses know to recommend the program, Sherlock-Loeb said. Virtua also provided Family Connects nurses with contractor ID badges, she said, making it easier for them to recruit clients at its hospitals.

“They really want their patients to have access to these programs,” Sherlock-Loeb said.

Inspira Medical Centers, another South Jersey hospital system, has also embraced the program. Dawn Goffredo, a nurse who oversees maternal child health for Inspira, called the Family Connects nurses “an integral part of our team” and said their home visits have “made a meaningful difference” for patients. “The feedback we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive,” she said.

While the program’s future in New Jersey isn’t set in stone, the nurses involved believe the model can reduce maternal mortality and build healthy families here and around the nation, which lags other wealthy countries in maternal health outcomes.

“One thing that sets other countries apart from the U.S. is the support they provide to families post birth,” Robyn D’Oria, CEO of the Central Jersey Consortium, told NJ Spotlight News. “If we want to move the needle [on maternal health outcomes] we need to build that infrastructure at the community level to support our families.”

This story is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.