Addressing maternal and infant health inequities requires improved birth record data collection

Abstract

Investigating the dimensions and extent of maternal and infant health disparities requires accurate demographic and health indicator data from birth registries. As the most complete and continuous dataset on the US population, the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) is trusted for surveillance in this health domain. All 50 US states, 5 territories, the District of Columbia and New York City must register births in their own jurisdictions and report the data to the NVSS, requiring coordination with the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

The NCHS provides standards for birth record data collection instruments and coding procedures that allow comparability across birth registries and over time. These standards include race and ethnicity categories and instructions to include self-reported parental race and ethnicity at birth registration. Owing to the self-reported nature of the data, agencies and researchers generally deem the NVSS data to be a gold standard for analyzing outcomes by race and ethnicity, even using birth records to validate race and ethnicity in other datasets^1,2.