Mothers, infants in Mississippi at health risk due to lost data
Mississippi has resumed collecting data for the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), a federal-state program that maintains a national database on maternal and infant health. But experts including Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Rita Hamad, worry that data lost during a pause last year could worsen outcomes for mothers and babies in the state, which has the highest infant death rate in the nation.
Overseen by the Division of Reproductive Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), PRAMS uses survey information collected by participating state health departments from women soon after they give birth. In January 2025, the Trump administration closed down the survey’s data entry system and later placed the entire CDC team managing PRAMS on administrative leave.
The loss of federal support led several states to pause data collection, with Mississippi’s lasting the longest at six months. While the state was able to retroactively collect some data, at least two months’ worth was lost, according to a May 8 Mississippi Today article.
“If you’re trying to address your infant mortality crisis in that kind of a data vacuum, I think it’s pretty obvious that you’re not going to be able to design high-quality interventions or high-quality, evidence-based policies,” Hamad, professor of social epidemiology and public policy, said in the article.
Hamad has used PRAMS data to examine questions such as the impact of paid family leave policies on rates of postpartum depression and has been working to keep PRAMS data accessible.
In a May 7 Guardian article on PRAMS and other nationwide datasets being altered or removed by the Trump administration, Hamad said, “It’s mind-boggling and really heartbreaking to me that we are literally having babies dying, and we’re not able to look and say, ‘OK, what is it about those babies? Are they in particular parts of the state? What kinds of health behaviors were their mothers engaged in? What kind of healthcare access did they have?’”
Read the Mississippi Today article: Mississippi leads the nation on infant deaths. Experts say gaps in state data collection may make it worse
Read the Guardian article: The Trump administration is deleting government data. From infant deaths to hunger, here are five ways it’s hurting Americans
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With federal maternal health database in limbo, a risk to mother and infant health (Harvard Chan School news)
