Other MCH Data Capacity Efforts

There are several data enhancement activities worth highlighting that are occurring or recently occurred in Minnesota.

Early Childhood Longitudinal Data System (ECLDS)

ECLDS is an innovative tool that combines data collected by Minnesota’s Department of Education, the Department of Human Services and the Department of Health into one online, interactive database. It shows children’s growth and achievement in relation to their participation in a variety of educational and social programs over time. ECLDS studies outcomes over the life course and enhances the state’s ability to answer broad and meaningful questions about outcomes for Minnesota’s young children.

Help Me Connect

Minnesota Help Me Connect (www.helpmeconnectmn.org) is a new online navigator that connects pregnant and parenting families with young children birth to 8 years of age with services in their local communities that support healthy child development and family well-being. Families and care providers can search for a variety of available programs and services closest to the family’s home address such as health and well-being services, early learning and child care programs, COVID-19 resources, disability resources and services, basic needs, and tribal nation programs and services.

Help Me Connect is an online, one-stop space to learn about and connect to a full range of resources for Minnesota families who are pregnant or parenting children birth to 8 years. This is a collaboration of the Minnesota Departments of Education, Health, and Human Services. Help Me Connect builds on the success of Help Me Grow, and is designed to be a resource for referring providers, with links to a range of local services including:

• Services that support healthy development and parenting;
• Next steps when there is a developmental or social-emotional concern;
• County resources for children with a diagnosed disability (waivers, community grants);
• Supports for parent/caregiver well-being;
• Tribal and American Indian services;
• Early care and education;
• Basic needs; and
• Resources for special populations including grandparents, foster parents, pregnant and parenting teens, refugees, and others.

Maternal Mortality Review Information Application (MMRIA) database

MMRIA helps Maternal Mortality Review Committees (MMRCs) organize available data and perform the critical steps necessary to comprehensively identify and assess maternal mortality cases. MDH has successfully incorporated use of MMRIA since gaining access in 2019. The database has been updated after all review committee meetings, including data on maternal mortality from 2014-2020. For sustainability, MDH staff and medical abstractors have attended national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) trainings and monthly office hours for up-to-date changes to the database.

Minnesota joined the CDC State Vitals and MMRIA Data Integration Pilot project in the spring of 2021. This pilot tests the feasibility of importing death records and linked birth/fetal death records, as applicable, for all PMSS-identified pregnancy-associated deaths into MMRIA. In collaboration with the pilot project, MDH has successfully identified maternal deaths occurring in 2021.

In September of 2021, MDH executed a data sharing agreement with CDC which allows Minnesota maternal mortality data to be shared back to CDC to provide a nationwide understanding of current maternal health trends. Using MMRIA improves the ability to collect standardized data, including standardized indicators (e.g., pregnancy-related deaths), which is an important step toward fully understanding the causes of maternal mortality and eliminating preventable maternal deaths.

Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS)

MN PRAMS has been a surveillance project between MDH and CDC since May 2002. The program randomly selects approximately 125-150 new mothers each month who had given birth within two to six months to survey. PRAMS is a population-based survey designed to collect information about the behaviors and experiences of women before, during, and immediately after pregnancy.

MN PRAMS was recently selected and awarded funding by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) to implement a Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) supplemental questionnaire from May 2022 through March 2023. SDOH factors like food insecurity, housing, access to health care, social support, transportation barriers, and racism can have a major impact on the immediate and long‐term health of pregnant and recently postpartum women and their infants, and for the next year, MN PRAMS will be able to include these measures on the survey.

For the third consecutive year since 2018, MN PRAMS achieved the 55% weighted response rate criteria. This means that Minnesota PRAMS data will be published and posted to CDC’s website and available to external researchers nationally. The MN PRAMS team is currently working closely with partners, stakeholders, and the PRAMS Advisory Steering Committee to solicit feedback, review, and discussion of potential questions and/or changes to current questions for Phase 9.

Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap)

Data for multiple MCH grants/programs are collected and managed using REDCap tools hosted at MDH. REDCap is a secure, web-based software platform designed to support data capture for research studies, providing 1) an intuitive interface for validated data capture; 2) audit trails for tracking data manipulation and export procedures; 3) automated export procedures for seamless data downloads to common statistical packages; and 4) procedures for data integration and interoperability with external sources. REDCap allows our MCH research/epidemiologists to create and manage data collection tools without the need to budget for high IT costs and puts the control back into the programs. It has been instrumental in improving how MCH collects data, especially from grantees. MCH programs that have utilized REDCap for data collection include:

• Title V MCH Block Grant Community Health Board Annual Report Submission
• Family Planning Special Projects Grants
• Personal Responsibility Education Program Sub-Grants
• Sexual Risk Avoidance Education Program Sub-Grants
• WIC and Family Home Visiting (FHV) use for trainings, evaluation, and more.

Information for Home Visiting Evaluation (IHVE) Data System

IHVE (pronounced “ivy”) is the Family Home Visiting (FHV) data system, which went live in January 2020. All FHV grantees receiving Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) funding, state Evidence-Based Home Visiting funding, state Nurse-Family Partnership expansion funding, or TANF Community Health Board funding are required to submit data to IHVE. IHVE is designed to exchange data with electronic health record (EHR) and case management systems used by home visiting programs across Minnesota, to reduce data entry burden for FHV grantees. IHVE-compatible data collection forms are embedded in Nightingale Notes and PH-Doc, two EHR systems used by nearly all Minnesota Local Public Health agencies, as well as Client Track, a case management system used by non-profit agencies implementing FHV programs. MDH is currently partnering with FHV grantees to build IHVE interoperability into one additional EHR by the end of 2022. MDH also maintains a set of IHVE data collection forms in the MDH REDCap system for FHV grantees that do not have an electronic health record or case management system with the capability of submitting data to IHVE.

Minnesota Public Health Data Access & Birth Defects Information System

In partnership with epidemiologists from Minnesota Environmental Public Health Tracking program, CFH birth defects staff help to build Interactive maps, charts, and queries with data on multiple health (i.e. Birth Defects and Birth Outcomes) and environment topics. For the first time, statewide 5-year prevalence’s of 40+ specific birth defects are available through the Minnesota Public Health Access website: https://data.web.health.state.mn.us/birth. They have also added new data query functionality including statewide and regional data, which are available for the 2013-2017 birth cohorts, and data can be broken out by race/ethnicity categories. In 2019, legislation passed that allows stillbirths to now be routinely reviewed for birth defects; 2019 will be the first cohort to include birth defects identified in either stillbirths or live births.

Newborn Screening Follow-up

Newborn Screening Systems Quality Improvement (QI) Project

In August 2022, Minnesota will complete Year 3 of the 4-year project that is funded by the Association of Public Health Laboratories/NewSTEPs to improve the Minnesota Newborn Screening (NBS) system by expanding and aligning long-term follow-up (LTFU) data collection across MDH blood spot, Critical Congenital Heart Disease (CCHD), and Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) LTFU.

Sickle Cell Data Collection Program (SCDC)

Minnesota is one of 11 states implementing a sickle cell disease surveillance system via a 3-year cooperative agreement with CDC. The MDH Health Promotion and Chronic Disease division leads the cross-divisional project team with support from CYSHN section staff and Health Economics programs. Despite our capacity challenges due to the COVID response, Minnesota has continued to work to develop data sharing agreements with clinical partners and our state Medicaid partner, the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS).

Women, Infant, and Children (WIC)

WIC provides data reports, maps and fact sheets on many topics, including birth outcomes, breastfeeding, WIC participation, weight status, growth and anemia among pregnant participants, infants, and children up to age five. MN WIC continues to expand its reporting by cultural identity, has increased its capacity to monitor food benefit utilization, including the ability to monitor food benefits to determine what foods are being redeemed and at which stores, as well as track trends in new certifications and drop offs by WIC participants. Technology advances include an online WIC application, interactive tableau data dashboards and use of texting to increase outreach to medical assistance participants not on WIC.