Population perspective on birth defects: From surveillance to epidemiology to public health

✍ Scribed by Russell S. Kirby; Marcia Feldkamp

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 42 KB
• Volume: 76
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1542-0752
• DOI: 10.1002/bdra.20328

✦ Synopsis

In the November issue, we present 11 articles reporting on research and methodological studies.

Collectively, these two issues highlight the progress made in applying birth defects surveillance data to our understanding of the epidemiology and public health significance of birth defects in the United States. The NBDPN is committed to primary prevention of birth defects and improvement of outcomes for children and families living with birth defects through the use of birth defects surveillance data for research, program planning, and program evaluation.

These articles were selected from those submitted in response to a call for manuscripts distributed widely to all state programs, the NBDPN membership, to the several hundred subscribers to the birth defects surveillance list serve, and as a posting on the NBDPN website. The 11 articles included here underwent both editorial board and formal peer review. All articles received blinded review, and to avoid any possible conflict of interest, full editorial responsibility was assigned to other editorial board members for those manuscripts coauthored by the editor. The review process was facilitated this year by the use of the online peer-review management system provided by the publisher for the editors of Birth Defects Research (Part A).

The articles are arranged in three groups. Three articles focus on approaches to developing national prevalence estimates for specific birth defects. Canfield et al. used data from NBDPN annual reports for selected states to create national estimates, while Boulet et al. and Bird et al. compared birth defects surveillance-based prevalence estimates with data from two hospital discharge survey databases. Meyer and Sever place this work in broad context.

Five articles focus on methods to improve the science and practice of birth defects surveillance. Wang et al.