As part of the radical dismissals that turned the Ministry of Health and Human Services upside down on Tuesday, the entire staff who supervised an annual survey was better understood to better understand the health of children and mothers – and that was considered the Golden Standard in the field – with administrative leave.
The monitoring system of the pregnancy risk assessment, or prams, is a data set of survey answers from people who give birth, both before and after birth. The dataset has some of the most detailed insights in the health of mothers in the US and has become an invaluable active for researchers who try to better understand the disproportionately high parent mortality rates.
The survey was checked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but managed by 46 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands, which are good for a maximum of 81% of the births in the country.
In an e -mail that was sent to some of those states on Tuesday afternoon, Jennifer Bombard, an epidemiologist at the CDC, wrote,
The future of the program was unclear. As part of his reorganization, HHS said that it will shift some units and even create a whole new agency, the administration for a healthy America.
“I am really worried about the potential effects. With the loss of staff supporting prams, we risk a longer delay or loss of this important data source for studying the health of the mother,” said Katy Kozhimannil, researcher in health policy at the University of Minnesota.
Spokespersons of the Department did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Data collection for Prams was previously paused, a step that, according to the CDC, was temporary, to ensure compliance with the executive orders of President Trump. At the time, researchers emphasized the importance of the data set in understanding the causes of mother mortality and creating programs to reduce them.
“I don’t know how to say it differently, this data system is needed. It is not an option. It is part of having a functional public health system,” said Marian Jarlenski, a professor of health policy at the University of Pittsburgh, then said.
The e -mail sent to some states on Tuesday did not give guidelines on what would happen.
“We currently do not know the implications for prams as [a] Surveillance project, “concluded De Korte E -mail.” As a pram beneficiary you will receive further guidelines from CDC when we have more information. “