Tammy Murphy's use of the administration and office of the first lady is under the microscope now that she's a political candidate, especially as her signature issue nurturing becomes a main pillar of her Senate campaign.

Health care writer Lilo Stainton looked into where Murphy's made progress and where others say her work has lacked.

Lilo joins me now.

Lilo, good to see you.

You know, it makes sense, given the first lady's work, that this would be a.

Key platform issue for.

Her going into the campaign.

But you dug into it a bit.

And I'm.

Curious what you found folks who criticized her work.

And folks who praised it.

Right.

So I think it's important to acknowledge right off the bat that the first lady gets enormous marks sort of all around for bringing maternal health and particularly the racial disparities in outcomes.

The fact that black moms have such poor outcomes compared to whites.

And bringing that to the table right.

So bringing that coalition building is important.

What it's harder to see is how some of the programs that she's championed are what they've done yet, because not all of them have come to fruition.

There are know many things that have been done.

Insurance has been extended, doulas have been trained, you know, but there's a lot of work that's been going on outside of sort of the.

Murphy, you know, that she didn't have direct hands on.

That's also improving hospital outcomes, reducing C-sections.

So there are a lot of different players in this space.

I think it's a little too soon to say exactly how much it's going to impact things.

Clearly, we're heading in the right direction.

Well, and we've seen, you know, you could pick.

Any topic where there's grassroots efforts on it and then a celebrity or.

Someone of notoriety comes in champions of the effort, and suddenly it's a thing.

And so, of course, credit.

Goes where it goes.

But are there grassroots efforts that perhaps she's looked over as first lady or she's accused of looking over?

Well, one of the things that struck me is this is this aims, this project by the Amy Mount Zion Church in Trenton, based in Trenton, rooted in Trenton.

And, you know, this is a group that they had a press conference in October last year to announce a project that would be a birthing center and an education center primarily aimed at black women in Trenton.

There is no place to give birth right now in Trenton City.

So this clearly filled a need and seemed to check all kinds of boxes.

Oddly enough, that to me, I thought the first lady wasn't at the event.

And I'd been told that she sort of stayed silent on this.

When I asked her about it, she said it is very much, you know, she said in an email response, and it is very much part of what they're trying to do.

She commends it.

She sees that part of the solution.

So I think there's a little bit of wait and see still from some of the leaders on the doing the work on the ground as to what that support looks like long term.

Okay.

Very quickly.

Yeah, very quickly.

There was a flash point.

This weekend over an ad the state began airing.

What was it and what was the contention there?

Right.

So the question was the states invested some money in ads for maternal health improvements that feature the first lady's voice.

There were questions raised about this.

I was told right away by the governor's office Saturday morning that they did not, that the ads predate her announcement and that they pulled them out of an abundance of caution and will be using other voices.

So stay tuned on that as well, because.

State money being used.

For an ad where she's featured two days after in the.

Senate campaign, the political campaign got it.

Lilo Stainton, thank you, as always.

Thank you Bri.