The Bureau of Maternal, Infant and Reproductive Health (BMIRH) of the New York City (NYC) Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) proposes to continue the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) in NYC. PRAMS is a surveillance system to identify and monitor maternal experiences and behaviors around the time of pregnancy. The overall goal of BMIRH is to achieve equitable and improved maternal, infant and reproductive health outcomes in NYC. Three overarching objectives are to: 1) improve sexual and reproductive health, 2) improve mortality, morbidity and the overall health of mothers and infants, and 3) promote early childhood development. Data gathered from PRAMS will be linked to items from the birth certificate offering a unique source of information on maternal, infant and reproductive health in NYC. Each month 180 women who gave birth in the previous two to four months will be randomly selected from NYC birth certificate records to participate in PRAMS. Women who give birth to low birth weight infants (<2,500 grams) will be oversampled. Women will be contacted by mail, with telephone follow-up for non-respondents. To ensure adequate participation, women will be sent $20.00 cash with the first mailing of the survey. Additionally, the mail questionnaire and telephone interview will be available in English, Spanish, and Chinese. The data collection cycle for each monthly sample will lasts up to 95 days. The DOHMH will contract with the Bloustein Center for Survey Research (BCSR) at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, for data collection and management activities. BCSR has experience working with several PRAMS sites and consistently produces high quality data while adhering to the CDC protocol. PRAMS data will be weighted by CDC to represent NYC resident women giving birth in NYC.
The specific aims of the project are to use PRAMS data to inform NYC's priorities related to improving maternal and infant health, and its choice of programs, policies and activities toward that end. PRAMS data will also serve as a NYC specific data source for monitoring key Healthy People 2020 indicators, several Maternal and Child Heath life course indicators, and new preventive women's services made available through the Affordable Care Act. The DOHMH will partner with academics, community groups, providers and professional organizations to ensure PRAMS data are used to support programs and policies to improve maternal and infant health.
Component A Core: Project Narrative The NYC Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System will provide population-based surveillance data of high scientific quality on maternal attitudes, experiences and behaviors before and during pregnancy as well as early infancy. These data are not available from any other source and thus are important for developing and evaluating programs and policies aimed at improving maternal and infant health in NYC. The data will also serve to monitor select national Healthy People 2020 indicators and measure new preventive women's health services made available through the Affordable Care Act.
