All children deserve a healthy start in life. With early, high-quality prenatal care, women have the best chance of a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. Unfortunately, a recent study ranked New Jersey 40^th in the nation in the percentage of women who received prenatal care in the first trimester.  While 80 percent of women received early care, only 64 percent of black women and 69 percent of Hispanic women did.

Recognizing the need to improve access to early prenatal care, I convened the Prenatal Care Task Force in February to examine barriers women face in obtaining early prenatal care.The Task Force recently released findings revealed that there are barriers that explain why women do not receive early prenatal care, including unintended pregnancies, lack of awareness of a pregnancy and lack of insurance.

Importance of Preconception Care and Family Planning

Nearly one-third of all pregnancies in New Jersey are unintended, mistimed or unwanted.With this high rate of unintended pregnancies, access to preconception care is crucial to keeping women healthy so they can deliver healthy babies. Preconception care provides health promotion, screening and interventions to reduce risk factors that might affect pregnancies. Family planning is critical because it can reduce unintended pregnancies and improve the initiation of early prenatal care. Currently, New Jersey serves about 130,000 women of childbearing age at family planning centers. However, this represents only about one third of the estimated women in need of publicly supported reproductive care.

Access to care

As a state we also have a responsibility to ensure that a sufficient network of medical professionals exists for women who seek care.A recent survey of prenatal care practitioners revealed that in some areas of the state women wait up to eight weeks for an appointment.The Department intends to work with the Maternal and Child Consortia to track the number of providers in our state so we can address shortages.

Importance of health insurance

Finally, the panel found that insurance coverage had a significant impact on whether women received care.Mothers with private insurance had the highest rate of first trimester care—nearly 96 percent.Mothers with no insurance during pregnancy had the lowest rate of early care—73 percent.Hopefully the federal government will move toward universal health care, but in the meantime, New Jersey has been in the forefront of insuring kids with its Family Care program. With Governor Corzine’s recent expansion of the program, it is anticipated that an additional 56,768 parents will be covered by the end of fiscal year 2011. 

 

For more information on the Prenatal Care Task Force Report please visit www.nj.gov/health/fhs/documents/task_force_report.pdf