maternal health

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."

It's part of a package of policy changes that aim to improve maternal and child health — dubbed the “Momnibus" — in the new state budget.