Honoring 5 Burke Foundation Community Champions

👋 Welcome to Starting Early. Every other week, we spotlight new reports, useful news, engaging interviews with people doing important work, and interesting takes on maternal health and early childhood development issues.

Our final issue of 2022 honors 5 Burke Foundation Community Champions who exemplify the value of centering community to support the health and wellbeing of children and families. These are inspiring leaders who understand the importance of upstream investments in children’s earliest years and the healthy development of families and communities. ⭐

They are:

Jesse Kohler, executive director of the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice
Jaye Wilson, founding president and CEO of Melinated Moms
Ceil Zalkind, president and CEO of Advocates for Children of New Jersey
Twylla Dillion, executive director of HealthConnect One
New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy

These Community Champions have challenged the status quo and achieved major changes on behalf of under resourced communities in New Jersey and across the US. We had enlightening conversations with all our champions about their experiences supporting children and families in the earliest years; you can read the full interview with First Lady Tammy Murphy here.

We appreciate their work and wish all our readers a happy, healthy, peaceful holiday season. Starting Early will be back January 27.

Read on and click the links to go deeper.

1. The power of relationships

The Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) addresses root causes of social issues by elevating healing-centered policies and initiatives and building coalitions across the country. Through CTIPP’s advocacy, the federal government provided $1 billion to support the School-Based Mental Health Professionals Demonstration Grant and the School-Based Mental Health Services Program to increase mental health support for young people.

Community Champion: Executive Director Jesse Kohler is a young leader driving national conversations on trauma and resiliency with the support of a growing team. Jesse joined CTIPP as an intern, later joined its board, and became executive director at age 26. In his childhood, Jesse experienced the harm trauma causes and learned the importance of trauma-informed practices.

“I found out about CTIPP and trauma-informed work accidentally,” Jesse says. “But the language I learned through my work helped me better understand what happened to me earlier in my life. It helped reduce shame for my reactions and come to a better understanding of myself. I saw how we can transform systems with this underlying paradigm of trauma-informed care and healing-centered engagement.”

During the pandemic, CTIPP lost co-founder Dan Press to cancer. Jesse reflected, “Dan illustrated how deeply relationships help to drive healing and how important they are to trauma-informed work. We always honor the importance of relationships and never take them for granted.”

Looking beyond the individual: “At CTIPP, we look at how trauma affects individuals, families, communities, and systems. We need systems that promote growth and the ability to navigate through obstacles life throws our way.”

2. Building community for Black and brown moms

Parenthood can be an isolating journey for parents lacking the resources to navigate the challenges of raising a child – especially parents of color. Melinated Moms builds communities of support for Black and brown moms, helping them find their voice.

Community Champion: Jatesha “Jaye” Wilson, Melinated Moms’ founding president and CEO, sought community while transitioning from marriage to divorce. Intending to connect likeminded moms, she soon realized the disproportionate challenges faced by birthing mothers of color and decided to act. Starting with 11 moms and their kids, Melinated Moms has grown to more than 10,000 members worldwide in 5 years.

“Melinated Moms is a MOM Profit™ — a social enterprise — giving moms the abilities they need in order to profit, literally. I want to give you the skills that you need. I want you to be able to be empowered, to be motivated, to do whatever you need to do to become a better version of yourself.”

Helping moms thrive: “Our case management tool helps moms understand you don’t have to live day by day, minute by minute, second by second,” Jaye shares. “In survival mode, you wake up and ask 1,000 questions in your head just to get to the end of the day. So I created a program to help moms find the resources to remove those thoughts from, ‘I just need to get from point A to point B,’ and move toward, ‘How do I look at my motherhood not as a burden, but as a blessing with the right support?’ People always say it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a village to raise a mom, too.”

Empowering advocates: “Our Find Your Roar advocacy training gives people the confidence to create change. I’m not teaching new methods; I’m training people to amplify their message and own experiences to contribute to policy changes, get resources for their communities, hold politicians and legislators accountable, and be part of macro-level changes that we often think are unattainable as regular civilians. We’ve trained over 1,000 people, who have done campaigns and PSAs, and spoken on local, state, and national platforms.”

3. Pioneering work for New Jersey children and families

Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) works with local, state, and federal leaders to elevate policies and programs that improve the health, social-emotional, and financial wellbeing of children and families.

Community Champion: Cecilia “Ceil” Zalkind has supported ACNJ’s mission to promote the wellbeing of New Jersey children and families for 38 years. She joined ACNJ in 1984 as policy director and became president/CEO in 2001. Ceil has contributed to groundbreaking policies in New Jersey, including enactment of a statewide universal newborn home visiting program and implementation of the landmark Abbott decision that increased state funding for children in school districts lacking the tax base to fully support quality public education. ACNJ was instrumental in the New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision to mandate access to high-quality pre-K for children in high-poverty school districts.

“When ACNJ got involved in Abbott, we discussed shifting our priorities and supporting families early on — not just looking at what happened when systems failed or families got in trouble. It was really through Think Babies in 2018 that we started to look at the elements of a prenatal-to-three system. Home visiting came up to the top immediately as a way to support families in their very important role as parents. The importance of a universal program is that it sends the message that this is something every family needs. Because it really is something every family needs.”

Retiring at the end of the year, Ceil reflects on her legacy: “To me, it’s about the incredible people who have come together on behalf of children. During the Abbott decision, I was certainly not the expert, but was setting the table and bringing together everyone involved in early education. Abbott changed the landscape of public education, acknowledging that learning doesn’t start at kindergarten or first grade — you need to capitalize on the earliest years. Now, at 20 years-plus since the decision, I think about the hundreds of thousands of children who the decision was aimed at helping. They’ve had an opportunity for high-quality early education that set them on a pathway to success, which they would not otherwise have had.”

4. Community-centered perinatal care

HealthConnect One advances birth equity for Black, brown, and Indigenous families nationwide through peer-to-peer perinatal support from community health workers, breastfeeding peer counselors, and others. The organization partners with the New Jersey Department of Health to increase the number of community doulas through the New Jersey Doula Learning Collaborative.

Community Champion: Executive director of HealthConnect One, Dr. Twylla Dillion advocates for the birthing workforce and under resourced communities. A 2022 Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow, Twylla’s work is guided by her first birthing experience at age 18: The hospital where she delivered tried to persuade her to have a c-section, despite her doctor’s disapproval. The experience shaped the course of Twylla’s professional and educational journey, helping her understand the need for equity in maternal care.

“Birth equity is a matter of what we experience — the birth we envisioned for ourselves, not one forced on us,” Twylla shares.

Supporting the doula workforce: “Doulas provide social support as well as physical support. We need to pay doulas appropriately for what they offer. Reimbursement and getting enrolled in Medicaid isn’t easy for doulas. We’re fighting for universal enrollment in New Jersey and on a national level.”

5. Eliminating maternal health disparities in New Jersey

In New Jersey, Black women are far more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women — the state has among the worst disparities in the nation.

Community Champion: New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy is determined to change that through her focus on improving the health and wellbeing of children and families. In 2019, she launched Nurture NJ, a multiagency initiative to reduce racial disparities in maternal mortality and make New Jersey the safest state to give birth to and raise a child. Tammy’s efforts are helping New Jersey become a national leader in advancing maternal and child health.

Real progress: “We have an ambitious goal — to become the safest, most equitable place in the nation to deliver and raise a baby. Thankfully, we’ve made incredible progress these past few years. Not only are we starting to see these gains in our own data, but the 2022 March of Dimes Report Card also highlighted New Jersey as one of only 4 states to actually improve birth outcomes. Celebrating the wins — whether it’s including nearly $60 million in our budget for maternal and infant health initiatives or creating the nation’s most robust universal nurse home visitation program — helps us build the necessary momentum to reach that goal.”

As a result of the First Lady’s leadership and advocacy, New Jersey enacted such policies as Medicaid reimbursement for doulas and a statewide universal newborn home visiting program. In addition to her statewide efforts and national work as chair of the National Governors’ Association’s Governors’ Spouses’ Program, Tammy Murphy centers the needs of communities and meets with moms, families, and community members across New Jersey to inform her work for game-changing systemic improvements.

Reflecting on her conversations with mothers of color: “We have been graced over the last 5 years by far too many souls who have shared their gut-wrenching stories in an effort to raise awareness and help others have better outcomes: moms who have lost babies, fathers who have lost life partners, families and friends who have watched loved ones suffer needlessly. The stories and trauma are widespread, but in our effort to center women’s voices in maternal and infant health, I would like to highlight Ajanee McConnell, one of our New Jersey moms and an incredible ally to Nurture NJ, who has shared her story at several of our events. Not being heard is a frequent refrain voiced by mothers of color, regardless of socioeconomic status as evidenced by the experiences conveyed by Serena Williams and Beyoncé. We simply cannot dismiss any of the lived experiences. Each one is unacceptable and will help us move beyond this scourge.”

Read the full interview here.