maternal health

Hear more from a family physician and health equity practitioner who's working to strengthen community supports for new and expecting parents.

In recent years, New Hampshire has seen a rise in people giving birth unexpectedly at home, in a car or en route to a hospital.

Their clients come to them out of need and a desire to feel safe so they commit to deep listening and filling in all the little details parents need when they give birth to their babies

This is part of a series of stories about people in New Hampshire working to improve maternal health.

The Monadnock Birth Center, which opened in 2008, closed permanently in December.

“We shouldn't have to live in an urban area to receive the highest level of evidence-based care,” says one healthcare worker involved in the project.

The bill also instructs the state Insurance Department to examine barriers to sustainability for New Hampshire maternity wards.

Organizers said they wanted to raise awareness about these issues while also providing a space for healing.

“I think it often is very surprising to people,” said Megan E. Romano, the Dartmouth researcher who led the study, “to think about this idea that chemicals in our environment might influence lactation.”

The peer-reviewed study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology says a pregnancy checkbox on national death certificates inflates the death rate. The CDC "disagrees with the findings."