We rolled out a new electronic birth certificate system this week that will be a game-changer for public health. Our system (which took about 18 months to plan, create & launch) will help us collect better surveillance data for our Winnable Battles like obesity, tobacco use, substance abuse, and better data about birth outcomes that will help with our maternal and child health interventions. It’ll also help us do a better job ensuring that our licensed professional midwives are meeting our expectations. And of course the reason we keep track of data is to find interventions that work to improve outcomes, like the home visiting program.
Hospitals, birthing centers, county health departments and several state agencies will be able to enter and retrieve information more efficiently and quickly. With the various levels of access, there are more protections for parents and babies alike.
The system uses a standard that’s consistent with the National Center for Health Statistics– producing critical information on public health topics like teenage births and birth rates, prenatal care and birth weight, risk factors for adverse pregnancy outcomes, infant mortality rates, leading causes of death, and life expectancy.
Thanks to the Office of Vital Records led by Krystal Colburn, our Vital Statistics Bureau and more than a dozen IT folks who made this happen including (but not limited to) Dimiter Pekin, Shobha Vaddireddy, Ellen Rayer, Michael Conklin, Shandy Odell, Michael Shaw, Alan Landucci-Ruiz, Matthew Marshall, Gordon Esra, Loretta Jackson, Smita Sahoo, Avinash Veerlapati, Cameron Pulcifer and Carl Farmis.
