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Frequently Asked Questions

1. How will PRAMS help improve the health of mothers and babies in North Carolina?
2. How can PRAMS data be used?
3. Do other states have a PRAMS survey?
4. Are all of the PRAMS state projects the same?

1. How will PRAMS help improve the health of mothers and babies in North Carolina?
• PRAMS provides data not available from other sources about pregnancy and the first few months after birth. Along with that from birth certificates, this information can be used to plan and review state maternal and infant health programs.
• As an ongoing project, PRAMS provides the information necessary to monitor changes in maternal and child health indicators (e.g., unintended pregnancy, prenatal care, smoking, drinking, breastfeeding, infant health). These data are available to state health officials to use to improve the health of mothers and infants.
• The PRAMS sample is chosen from all women who had a live birth recently, so findings can be applied to the state's entire population of women who have recently delivered a live-born infant.
• PRAMS provides state-specific data that allows comparisons among participating states because the same data collection methods are used in all states.
2. How can PRAMS data be used?

The data from the North Carolina PRAMS project will be used to plan various types of programs across the state to support pregnant women and new mothers. For example, PRAMS data has been used with North Carolina's Back-To-Sleep Campaign, which aims to reduce SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) by teaching parents safer sleep positions for their babies.

In this case, PRAMS data showed which mothers had a tendency to put babies to sleep on their stomach. By sharing this data with the Back-to-Sleep Program, planners can use this data to better reach this group of women and lead to healthier infant sleep positions.

These data can also be used to:

• identify groups of women and infants at high risk for health problems
• monitor changes in health status
• measure progress towards goals in improving the health of mothers and infants

In addition, information is distributed to health departments, state legislators, professional societies, and researchers.

3. Do other states have a PRAMS survey?

Currently, 37 states plus New York City and South Dakota participate in PRAMS:

Alabama Alaska Arkansas Colorado Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Illinois Louisiana

Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Nebraska New Jersey New Mexico

New York New York City North Carolina Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota (Point in Time)

Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

For details on programs in other states, visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) PRAMS website.

4. Are all of the PRAMS state projects the same?

In many ways, yes.

All of us follow similar procedures for data collection. There are 56 survey questions asked in every state. This is considered the core of the survey and is developed and evaluated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These items can be used to compare the different states.

In addition to these questions, each state adds questions that are of particular interest to them. North Carolina has a total of 77 questions: 56 CDC core questions and 19 standard and 5 state-specific questions.

Contact PRAMS.