Plenary Panel-Research to Practice The U. S. Pre-term Birth Rate is Rising: Are We Rising to the Challenge?

Michael Kogan: Well, good morning everybody. I’m Michael Kogan from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau and the title of this plenary session is “The Pre-Term Birth Rate Is Rising - Are We Rising To The Challenge?” Pre-term birth, as you know, is defined as a live birth less than 37 weeks. Why are we talking about this topic? Well, the pre-term birth rate, preliminary data CDC indicates that the pre-term birth rate was 12 live births per 100 lives births in 2002. That’s 28 percent higher the rate than it was in 1981. Further, the low birth weight rate was 7.8 per 100 in 2002, the highest level than it’s been in the last 30 years in the United States. Moreover, as we’ll discuss with our first speaker, disquieting ratio and ethnic disparities exist in the incidence of pre-term birth and low birth weight. Pre-term birth and low birth weight by themselves are not diseases, however, they are the two most important predictors of an infants subsequent health and survival. Infants born before 32 weeks have 72 times the risk of dying in the first year as infants born at term. They’re the second leading cause of infant mortality. Infants born pre-term at low birth weight are also more likely to have congenital malformations and be at higher risk for subsequent diseases throughout the rest of their lives. This session follows the theme of this meeting from research to practice. Our first two sessions are perhaps more research based and our second two sessions really talk about how we’ve taken research and put those into practice at the state program level.