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Bruce McIntyre III still remembers the day he had to bury his life-partner, Amber Rose Isaac, after she died due to complications from an emergency C-section in April 2020.
“I just lost my partner, and I had to bury my partner on my birthday,” McIntyre, a New York City resident, said during a Q&A session hosted by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey on Oct. 25 at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center in New Brunswick.
McIntyre and his partner’s story were featured in the award-winning documentary “Aftershock,” which also tells the story of Shamony Gibson, who died in October 2019, 13 days after giving birth to her son due to a birth-related pulmonary embolism.
The documentary showcases how Gibson’s partner, Omari Maynard, and McIntyre formed an instant friendship through their shared loss, and became activists.
Together, Maynard, McIntyre and Shamony’s mother, Shawne Benton Gibson, begin speaking out about the disparities Black women face during and after pregnancy, while advocating for change within the maternal healthcare system.
Bringing state-wide attention to maternal health issues facing Black women, Horizon held a screening of the documentary and a Q&A session where New Jersey medical professionals heard from the film’s director and producer, Tonya Lewis Lee and Paula Eiselt, as well as McIntyre.
Black mothers are seven times more likely to die due to maternal-related complications than their white counterparts in New Jersey, First Lady Tammy Murphy said during the event.
“The United States is ranked fifty-fifth in the world for maternal deaths. New Jersey is ranked forty-seventh, and the state’s racial disparities are even worse,” Murphy said. “A Black baby is three times more likely than a white baby to die before his or her first birthday.”
This was the impetus, Murphy said, behind all of Nurture NJ’s work and its strategic plan.
“I’ve spent nearly five years listening to the cries from Black mothers who have lost their babies or very nearly their own lives,” Murphy said. “Fathers who have lost their life partners … and countless women of color who’ve told tragically similar stories.
“We will not only combat our maternal and infant health crisis we will make New Jersey the safest and most equitable state in the nation to deliver and raise a baby.”
Lee and Eiselt didn’t know one another prior to making the film but connected through their shared passion for maternal health and filmmaking.
“We really had a shared vision. We knew that we wanted to tell it through people’s lived experiences,” Lee said. “We knew that we had information that we had to get into the film, but we wanted to do that in a way that felt organic that just took (viewers) on a journey.”
Simone Edwards, Horizon’s special projects director for community health, who helped organize the event, said she wanted to use the film as, “a catalyst for New Jersey to start a conversation and to also figure out solutions that would move the needle in the right direction.”
With Horizon being the state’s largest health insurance provider, Edwards said she wanted to use her company’s resources to bring stakeholders together.
“The number one thing we wanted to get out of this is not only convene all these different stakeholders, but also to come away with letting us be aware of statistics, and the lived experience these individuals and their families have been through,” Edwards said. “So, what are you going to do about it?”
New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute CEO and President Linda Schwimmer said hospitals have fewer expenses performing C-sections compared to vaginal births because C-sections take less time to perform and requires less staff than a vaginal birth. Schwimmer said the institute has seen a steady increase in the number of C-sections being performed over the years.
Schwimmer said hospitals need to be in incentivized to allow mothers to have a vaginal birth, saying this can be done through funding for adequate medical staff. “There also has to be some accountability from the system,” Schwimmer said. “I think that’s where the insurance companies come in. There has to be a way to figure out reimbursement incentives.”
Added Eiselt: “We need to reimburse more for vaginal births. There has to be some financial incentive, because I think it’s going to take all of that to truly shift the culture.”
Kerry McKean Kelly, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Hospital Association, said while hospitals prefer vaginal births, C-sections are performed when it necessary to protect the life and health of the baby and mother.
“C-sections are invasive procedures that carry increased risks and require a team of specialists, so they are not usually the first option when determining a future mother’s delivery plan,” McKean Kelly said.
Schwimmer said New Jersey does not have up-to-date data on maternity morbidity and mortality.
“The important thing I think, for us as a state is to have more recent data,” Schwimmer said. “The most recent data we have on that right now is from 2016. So, again, action that we can all take together is to call for more recent data.”
Social determinants, including racism within the medical system, Schwimmer said, is another issue.
Schwimmer said the film spoke to the need for “respect and listening to the patient and centering the pregnant woman, her family members, and her team. Making sure birthing facilities are friendly and open to midwives and that people can also bring a doula if they would like to support their birth experience.”
McIntyre said he still mourns losing his partner but finds strength through telling her story and remembering the lessons she taught him. He founded the saveArose Foundation, a non-profit organization started in Amber’s honor.
“This has become my life’s purpose,” McIntyre said. “So, I feel like as long as I’m doing this work, I’m honoring her in the best way that I possibly could.”
McIntyre, who has a background as a financial loan advisor, is working on opening a birthing center in the Bronx. He travels around the United States speaking with medical professionals and politicians about the flaws within the maternal healthcare system.
Among those attending the screening was Garden State Equality Project Manager Justine Evyn Saliski of West Orange, who said she wanted to attend the event because as a white woman, “who is able to walk with so much privilege, it’s important for me to sit in spaces to learn more about the disparities that BIPOC women are facing while giving birth in America because the racial inequities and medical inequities are just unfathomable.”
Saliski said the film shares an important, and impactful, message. “Sitting in that sadness and uncomfortableness is the only way that I think we’re going to be able to progress and get to a better space,” Saliski said.
“I wanted to come today because I was curious to see what the insurance companies are doing in terms of stipends,” said Registered Nurse and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital LGBTQ Navigator Layla Orlando, who worked in the labor and delivery department for one year. “And what they’re doing to help bridge the gap in terms of insurances and the medical field, and what role they’re playing.”
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Vashti Harris may be reached at vharris@njadvancemedia.com.
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