The Trump administration recently eliminated a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) program that collected data on pregnant and postpartum women and young children and laid off its team and other workers in the Division of Reproductive Health. Experts quoted in an April 24 News from the States story say that the loss of this resource will harm the health of mothers and young children.
The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), started in 1987, is the only national survey dataset dedicated to pregnancy and the postpartum period. Public health researchers and practitioners have used it, for example, to identify communities with low breastfeeding rates and interventions that can prevent domestic violence.
“I can’t overemphasize what an important dataset this is and how unique it is to really show national trends and help us try to understand how to optimize the health of moms and young kids,” Rita Hamad, associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in the article. Hamad has used the dataset to examine questions such as how paid family leave policies affect rates of postpartum depression.
She noted that while some states may be willing to keep the program running, those with the worst maternal and child health outcomes are least likely to do so. As a result, researchers will no longer be able to make comparisons across states.
Without robust data, it will be harder to protect the health of women and children, Hamad said. “The government needs this data to accomplish what it says it wants to do, and it’s not going to be able to do that now,” she said.
Read the News from the States story: Researchers say moms and babies are ‘going to get hurt’ by federal pregnancy data team cuts
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Rita Hamad
