Improving maternal health outcomes

There is nothing like the feeling of holding your baby for the first time. It is a moment that so many new parents cherish and await impatiently. Unfortunately, for some parents, this moment is delivered with high levels of stress and complications. The baby may arrive early or the pregnant parent is in complications.

Anyway, we know that not all pregnancies have the same risk and the same happy results. In fact, studies in New York have discovered that black women are four times more likely to die of a cause associated with pregnancy, such as complications of pregnancy, and six times more likely to die of a cause of pregnancy, such as postpartum suicide or overdose, than white and non-Hispanic women. It is unacceptable in 2025, especially in New York with the best health care and doctors in the world.

Although each experience is unique, each parent deserves to be heard, safe and well maintained. This is why, among the very first programs that we announced when our administration came into office Doula initiative on the city level This would support women who run disproportionately New Family Home Visits Initiative This guarantees that new parents get the sustainable help they need to raise their family from the first time.

From the spring of 2022, our administration invested in a Doula initiative at the level of the city in order to provide more support for future parents to fight against the unacceptable trend of maternal mortality. In three years, this program has made major progress. To date, the City Doula initiative has helped more than 3,200 families in the five districts, exceeding its goal of serving 1,000 people who give birth per year, having reached 1,128 new customers in only 2024.

Many families served by the program come from black and brown communities across the city, with 61% of self -identified as black and 44% customers identified as Hispanic in 2024. In addition, there have been no maternal deaths for the participants in the program as a life of mothers are being safely safely – a major indicator that we do is to succeed. In addition, this program contributed to contributing to a 25% increase in access to Doula in the city between 2022 and 2024.

This initiative is only part of our broader commitment to New York the best place to raise a family. Our administration has invested $ 34 million in a New Family Home Visits Initiative Where nurses and social workers support families with a newborn baby who has already connected more than 23,000 families to home visit programs, including the support of Doula.

The program also works with 10 hospitals across the city, helping to educate the health care community on the role of doubles, distributing other critical information such as the Guide of the Quila of the HospitalAnd establish relations with individuals and communities to further support new and pending families.

All these important initiatives are part of our benchmark “Healthy»Campaign, which aims to increase life expectancy for New Yorkers to 83 years by 2030, with the specific aim of reducing black maternal mortality in New York by 10% by 2030.

Our investments in recent years have been promising, with better birth results, stronger partnerships and healthier families. We will continue to work every day to provide the support infrastructure that the city has to offer to each child and each family who calls New York.

In the end, a safe and without complication is that each New Yorker deserves. The result differences according to the color of your skin or the place where you live are not acceptable.

We are committed to doing everything in our power to minimize the impacts of federal discounts on New Yorkers, and although we cannot fill the void, we work with state partners to minimize damage and invest in programs like these which will serve our most vulnerable.

We want all New Yorkers to prosper in the largest city in the world, which means providing support for our mothers, taking care of our newborns and helping to reach the mission of our administration to make New York the best place to raise a family.

Miles-Gustave is the deputy mayor of New York for health and social services.