Other MCH Data Capacity Efforts

As mentioned above, the peer group style of the Division of Population Health Data (DPHD) and cross-office and agency collaborations allows the MCH Epidemiology Unit to access data and information systems to support MCH epidemiological activities.

The DPHD maintains multiple public-facing dashboards that provide data on common indicators at the state, region, district, and locality level. These dashboards include MCH, Health Behavior, Injury and Violence, Firearm Injury, Cancer, CYSHCN and Sickle Cell and PRAMS. Additionally, to prepare for the upcoming 2025 MCH Needs Assessment, a partnership with mySidewalk was pursued as a platform to highlight publicly-available and in-house indicators related to maternal and child health. This platform will be a launched in fall 2023.

The Virginia Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring Systems (VA PRAMS), Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), Virginia Youth Survey (Youth Risk Behavior Survey), and the Virginia Cancer Registry (VCR) are housed within the DPHD. DPHD epidemiologists, including the MCH Epidemiology Unit, actively participate on steering committees regarding these sources and collaborate for access and analysis. In addition, the MCH Epidemiologist Lead implemented a bi-monthly cross-unit journal club within DPHD to discuss papers and methods and encourage collaboration across epidemiology units by facilitating new projects using existing data sources and identifying research gaps. The DPHD also has discussions to update health surveys, as necessary. For example, Virginia legalized marijuana in the state as of July 1, 2021, and our population health surveys made provisions to add marijuana-related supplements/questions to the surveys, with PRAMS starting the marijuana supplement in October 2021 and BRFSS in 2022. Additionally, Phase 9 of PRAMS will be launching in the summer of 2023, and discussions with multidisciplinary stakeholders were held to finalize questions to be included in the standard questionnaire.

Virginia House Bill 2111 (2021) established the Maternal Health Data and Quality Measures Task Force for the purpose of evaluating maternal health data collection to guide policies in the Commonwealth to improve maternal care, quality, and outcomes for all birthing people in the Commonwealth. The provisions of the bill require the Task Force to monitor and evaluate relevant stakeholder data related to race, ethnicity, demographic, and clinical outcomes to examine quality of care. The Task Force will also explore the role of implicit bias training for providers. The first Task Force meeting launched in March 2022 and continues throughout 2023, with a final report of recommendations due in December. The MCH Epidemiologist Lead serves as a subject matter expert/member on this Task Force.

Unite Us: Unite Virginia is a coordinated care network of health and social care providers. Partners in the network are connected through a shared technology platform, Unite Us, which enables them to send and receive electronic referrals, address people’s social needs, and improve health across communities. Unite Virginia is built in partnership with the Office of the Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources, the Virginia Department of Health and the Virginia Department of Social Services, Optima Health, Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association, Partnering for a Healthy Virginia, and Kaiser Permanente. The actions taken in the Unite Us platform generate data about referral outcomes and population characteristics, and the MCH Epidemiologist is exploring potential usefulness of these data for the MCH populations.

Fatality Review: As the Maternal Mortality Review Team (MMRT) and Child Fatality Review Team (CFRT) are housed under the Division of Death Prevention in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), DPHD maintains a relationship for data sharing and expanded data capacity related to maternal and child mortality and health disparities. Data on child fatality come from V-MEDS, an OCME-managed database, and an upcoming CFRT report focused on adolescent suicides will be released in fall 2023. Data on maternal mortality come from comprehensive record reviews for each decedent, which is entered into CDC's MMRIA database, funded under ERASE MM. Surveillance data include demographics, cause and manner of death and expanded information on precipitants of and circumstances surrounding the death, and social determinants of health, as well as recommendations from the MMRT. ERASE MM funding will also support development and implementation of interviews to capture qualitative data of lived experiences by those who have been affected by maternal deaths, and will support the evaluation of programs and policy that have come out of prior MMRT reports. The latest triennial report from the Maternal Mortality Surveillance Program is forthcoming, and a new legislative mandate in 2023 has required reports to be released annually to increase reporting timeliness.