It Takes More Than a Village—It Takes Collaboration Statewide to Ensure a Healthy Family

Abstract

Improving access to early prenatal care is essential to promoting the health of New Jersey mothers, infants, and families. Efforts to improve access to early prenatal care must take a multipronged approach to reduce barriers to prenatal care. Access to health insurance coverage early in the pregnancy is vital for early prenatal care. Ensuring that pregnant women have health insurance during their first trimester of pregnancy would improve receipt of early prenatal care. This is only one of the barriers we see that prevents women from receiving the care they need to ensure a healthy pregnancy outcome. Despite major expansions of health care access during the 1990s, one in five women giving birth in New Jersey in 2006 still failed to receive first trimester prenatal care. Mothers most likely to benefit from early prenatal care because of their higher risk of poor birth outcomes remain even less likely to receive it.