“When I think about this maternal and infant health work, there’s a beautiful network of engaged individuals who really want the same thing. So, we actually are all rowing the boat in the same direction.”
– Lisa Asare
Interview with Lisa Asare
A lifelong advocate for maternal and child health, Lisa Asare was appointed in March to lead MIHIA, the nation’s first and only cabinet-level entity dedicated to improving maternal and infant health. Previously, she served as Deputy Commissioner of Health Services at the New Jersey Department of Human Services and is currently the president of the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs board of directors.
We selected Lisa as a Community Champion for her more than 20 years in public service tackling complex policy and programmatic challenges often exacerbated by deep-rooted systemic biases. At the New Jersey Departments of Health and Human Services, Lisa approached her work with thoughtfulness, humility, creativity, and a willingness to partner beyond the halls of government. And she has always centered the community voice, knowing that those closest to the issues must inform and guide the solutions.
What is the mission of your organization and how do you carry it out?
Our mission at the Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Authority, otherwise known as MIHIA, is to address maternal and infant health in a way that addresses the disparities that exist by race and ethnicity. The goal and the mission are really to make New Jersey the safest and most equitable place to have a baby and raise a child.
I carry that mission forward mostly through Nurture NJ, the state’s campaign to improve the experiences of mothers and babies. I was honored to be one of the architects of the Nurture NJ strategic plan — which developed a blueprint for how to make New Jersey the safest and most equitable place to have a baby and raise a child.
At MIHIA we lean into innovation, technology, businesses, incubation, entrepreneurship, to drill down and figure out new ways of addressing an age-old problem: how to help mothers, babies, and families.
What accomplishment are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of being a mother. I have 3 kids, all born in New Jersey – 2 girls and a boy. And I see this work as extremely personal because it’s a big job to be a parent and it’s a hard job. The setting we’re creating today is a setting my own daughters will come up in. I’m not just doing this for my own daughters, but for all our daughters. We want New Jersey to be a great place to have a baby and to raise a child. The disparities are startling. A Black woman is 7 times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related complication than her white counterpart. And a Black baby is 3 times less likely to make it to its first birthday. That’s alarming.
And that has to change. When I think about accomplishments or what is important to me, I’m a mom and I think about this work through the lens of a mother. We can do better and we’re on the path to do better for families in New Jersey.
What’s the biggest challenge facing families in the first 1,000 days?
I think one of the biggest challenges is that postpartum period. I always sort of chuckle and laugh and say we do so much in the prenatal period. We have fancy baby showers and now we’re having something called reveal parties. But the truth of the matter is the real work starts the minute you get home with the baby. And that, unfortunately, is when a lot of people are isolated — a lot of people that don’t have family nearby. Much of the work we do is focused on that postpartum period, focused on the universal home visiting program, Family Connects NJ, that the Burke Foundation helped us pilot in Mercer County and is now going statewide. Supporting doulas, community health workers — people that will come to your home and will check in on you before you get to your 6-week postpartum checkup.
And so I think a lot of the work we have to do needs to focus on that postpartum period. We should create the celebratory events and that checking in and that social support after a birth.
I think another thing we could do is really leverage people in the community, almost re-create community. There are retired people, there are people whose kids live across the country and maybe there’s a family in their local area they could support.
One thing we’re thinking about is, “How do we leverage the resources we have in communities? How do we create systems that support families so people don’t feel as isolated or as vulnerable as they do when they get home with a new baby?” And they may have a toddler or 2 and maybe the partner has to go back to work. These situations are really tough and, unfortunately, they sometimes lead to tough outcomes.
The need for social supports, it’s real. The need for women with more experience to help you out, to help you navigate, to help you understand what you should expect, what’s happening. It’s incumbent on us to create those scenarios and those situations where people get support and feel supported as they need to be.
What gives you hope for families?
The establishment of this new state authority, MIHIA. I’m proud and honored that we’re the only such state authority in the nation focused solely on maternal and infant health.
New Jersey has made a massive commitment to this work. We have 21 state agencies focused on this issue. We have the Departments of Corrections, Environmental Protection, Transportation, Community Affairs — all of these people imagining what they could do differently to support maternal and infant health. That has never been done. I’ve worked in this field over 25 years and I have never seen so much energy, so much goodwill, so much activity galvanized around the issue of maternal and infant health. So it’s exciting and it makes me very hopeful.
And then to throw in innovation and to be able to lean into technology, to lean into AI, to lean into business startups is really, really exciting because we’re looking at maternal and infant health from a very holistic perspective. As I said before, it’s not just about prenatal care and postpartum care. It’s really about life, where people live, if they’re gainfully employed, if they’re housed, have food, have transportation, if they have ability to recreate and to relax to mitigate some of those stressors. It’s really about life and the positive things in life will lead us to better maternal and infant health for everyone.
What is the secret to a great partnership?
Authenticity. We come to the table as our organizations, but we come to the table as people too. The best partnerships I’ve had usually have a good relationship built into the partnership somewhere where we can be honest with one another. We agree, I think more often than not, but sometimes we disagree. We need to be honest and authentic with people. I see, when I think about this maternal and infant health work, there’s a beautiful network of engaged individuals who really want the same thing. So we actually are all rowing the boat in the same direction. We have different ways of rowing sometimes, but I think we want the same end goals.