Modern Medicine In NJ: Jefferson Health's New Bereavement Program

SOUTH JERSEY — About 1 million U.S. women who get pregnant each year experience miscarriage or stillbirth, or gave birth to a baby who does not survive, data from the National Advocates for Pregnant Women indicate.

Kristen Samuelson of South Jersey told Patch she was one those women about a decade ago, which led her to establish an organization called Three Little Birds Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support.

The program is offered at Jefferson Health's New Jersey campuses and has several main functions, she said. The first two are:

• supporting immediate and long-term needs of those who experience the loss of a pregnancy or baby with services including free or low-cost funeral or memorial service coordination, tactful memory making and photo taking and advocating for insurance coverage and benefits
• working to eliminate the stigma associated with pregnancy and infant loss by hosting many different fundraisers like car shows, awareness walks and a barbecue/flying disc tournament to support those advocacy efforts

"We've had an opportunity to really listen and understand and hear everybody's journeys," Samuelson said. "And we've been able to take several, you know, unfortunate aspects of journeys from families and turn them into positives."

Another function of Three Little Birds Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support consists of training health care workers on relevant topics such as offering bereavement services, understanding the grief women who have lost a child go through and empowering the family to do as much as possible to memorialize the child, said Samuelson.

About a half dozen Jefferson Health clinicians recently completed the six-week online perinatal bereavement training program with more expected to undergo the training soon, said Marilyn Mapp, Director of Nursing in the Women's & Children's Section of Jefferson Health – New Jersey.

"Three Little Birds volunteers were always coming in [but with the training] it gave more of our staff the tools to have that conversation that is compassionate and ... through a diversity, equity and inclusion lens."

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