• Maine’s epidemiologists worked on developing the 2022 and 2023 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), the 2021 Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey (MIYHS) and the Phase 9 Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) surveys. Maine’s 2021 BRFSS includes questions on adverse childhood experiences. The 2022 and 2023 BRFSS include questions related to social determinants of health and discrimination. The 2021 MIYHS was postponed from Spring 2021 to Fall 2021, but included new questions on adolescent mental health, adverse childhood experiences, and the impact of COVID-19. Maine’s Phase 9 PRAMS survey includes more items related to social determinants of health, including discrimination, as well as topics such as family leave.
• MCH funds partially sustain an epidemiologist to support the Adolescent Health and Injury Prevention (AHIP) Program. This position conducts analyses on suicide, with a focus on youth suicide, as well as other injury outcomes that impact Maine’s MCH population, such as drownings, motor vehicle crashes, and traumatic brain injury. This position is also working closely with Maine Center for Disease Control (Maine CDC) and Preventions syndromic surveillance staff to monitor suicide ideation and attempts in Maine emergency departments using syndromic data.
• Maine’s epidemiologists have been working with contractors as Maine transitioned to a new data system that includes linked newborn hearing, bloodspot, birth defects, and birth certificate data. Epidemiologists have been conducting data quality checks and working on evaluating the quality of audiology reports related to newborn hearing screenings. This work is funded by the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) grant and some MCH funding. Similarly, data related to birth defects are being evaluated in the new system. These data are reported to the National Birth Defects Prevention Network on an annual basis.
• Between 2020-2022, Maine’s Title V program hosted a Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) fellow, Andrea Lenartz. Ms. Lenartz focused on MCH and Public Health Emergency Preparedness. This allowed Maine’s Title V program to access Maine’s National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS), which tracks reportable infectious diseases. Ms. Lenartz used data from NEDSS to conduct analyses on COVID-19 and youth. She created a dashboard using these data, which is accessible from Maine CDC’s COVID-19 data page. Ms. Lenartz was hired as a MCH epidemiologist for Maine in September 2022.
• Maine is currently hosting another CSTE Fellow, Rebecca Bussa, whose work is focused on chronic disease and maternal and child health. She has been working on an evaluation of Maine’s PRAMS survey and analyses related to adolescent sleep and health outcomes.  Starting in August 2023, Maine will welcome another CSTE Fellow, Lexi Wilhelmsen. Ms. Wilhelmsen’s fellowship will focus on maternal mortality and morbidity.
• Maine epidemiologists, in collaboration with Maine’s Perinatal Outreach Coordinator and the federal CDC, launched the Levels of Care Assessment Tool (LOCATe) for hospitals. Our epidemiologists worked closely with the CDC to solve data discrepancies. A map was created to provide information to providers about the hospitals by level of care. This map has been updated on an ongoing basis as hospital facilities close their birthing units.
• Data on birth outcomes, child health, and adolescent health by year, age, sex, race, ethnicity, educational attainment, income, and geography (when available) were analyzed and provided to support Maine’s Shared Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA). Maine’s Shared CHNA is an effort between the Maine CDC and Maine Hospital Systems to provide data to all counties. These data are used to select State and local priorities. Data on over 200 indicators are put into reports and made available online. Data for the Shared CHNA are available at: https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc/phdata/MaineCHNA/maine-interactive-health-data.shtml
• Maine’s MCH Epi Team received Tableau licenses and we are working on developing dashboards to more effectively share data with outside stakeholders. The first dashboard we created was on COVID-19 and youth. We also created a birth outcomes dashboard, which has been shared with partners in vital records. We plan to host this dashboard on the new Maine Title V webpage, which is currently in the revision process. We are also looking into building county-level MCH reports using indicators from the MIECHV needs assessment. We will incorporate these reports into the MCH birth outcomes dashboard. We also developed a dashboard to display syndromic suicide data, which is hosted on the AHIP website. For our Maternal, Fetal and Infant Mortality Review (MFIMR) Panel, we are considering using Tableau to simplify the development of quarterly reports. MCH analysts are also using Tableau for data checking and quality improvement.
• Our MIECHV evaluation focused on examining child maltreatment and home visiting was completed in December 2022. For this evaluation, we linked home visiting data with birth certificate and child maltreatment reports. Our current MIECHV evaluation is focused on caregiver mental health and includes quantitative and qualitative data collection efforts.
• Due to increasing concern about substance use during pregnancy and the initiation of Maine’s Plan of Safe Care across Maine birthing hospitals, we conducted analyses of Maine hospital discharge data on neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) and maternal opioid use. These analyses were presented to Maine’s Child Health Data Workgroup and a summary data brief is currently being developed to summarize the findings. Findings indicated an 11% decrease in NAS diagnoses between 2016 and 2019.
• Maine became part of the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health (AIM) in 2021. As part of this initiative, we received permission to access quarterly hospital discharge data and we started submitting maternal morbidity indicators to the AIM data portal in September 2022. Thus far, two quarters of hospitalization data have been submitted.
• During 2022, Maine received funding for an Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems grant and launched Help Me Grow. Maine’s epidemiologists are working with these two initiatives to monitor enrollment in early childhood services.
• In 2023, Maine’s Title V program, in collaboration with Maine’s Office of Population Health Equity, released an RFP to conduct a Perinatal Health Disparities Needs Assessment. The award was given to Market Decisions, Inc of Portland, Maine. This organization will gather qualitative and quantitative data to better understand disparities during the perinatal period. The needs assessment has an anticipated completion date of January 2024.

As can be seen by the breadth and scope of MCH data-related activities conducted in the previous year, we have had success in accessing and advancing MCH data-related activities. We feel grateful for the increased capacity gained through the CSTE Applied Epidemiology Fellowship and the MCH Graduate Student Epidemiology Program. Both of these opportunities increased our ability to conduct more in-depth analyses and advance our technological expertise. Under the current administration, there has been increased willingness to share data across programs and agencies and we have not encountered significant challenges to our use of MCH data.