Delaying care or not getting any at all puts the baby and the mother at greater risk of serious medical problems, and Bexar County, Tex., has one of the highest rates in the nation of premature births. So what might be done to ensure mothers get better care, despite scarce resources?
Waiting for Medicaid eligibility is a common experience in Bexar County, Tex., and one big reason why women don't receive prenatal care as early as they should. It contributes to the rising number of babies born to women who received prenatal care after their first trimester — or not at all.
In Johnson County, for every 1,000 infants born in recent years, fewer than five don’t make it to their first birthday. In Wyandotte County, the number is closer to eight.
Advocates have been urging the FDA to allow corn masa to be fortified with folic acid for years, with the goal of curbing rare birth defects among Hispanic children. The FDA hasn't budged so far, but that could change as the agency reviews new research.
When it comes to lowering high infant mortality rates, Rwanda has become an encouraging if unexpected example of what can be done with "big data made small."
Washington state health officials say they’ll start telling families who’ve lost babies to a devastating birth-defects cluster about genetic studies aimed at decoding possible causes.
Washington state Medicaid officials are changing the rule for coverage of vitamins that contain folic acid — a change that may reduce the risk of birth defects like those seen in an ongoing cluster in Central Washington.
Washington is among 33 states that don’t have active birth-defects surveillance systems to track problems. It took an astute nurse to raise warnings about a cluster of rare and fatal defects in Central Washington.
The Food and Drug Administration will review a long-delayed petition calling for the voluntary addition of folic acid to corn masa to prevent neural-tube defects such as those seen in Washington’s cluster.
More than 40 mothers have lost babies to a rare and deadly birth defect in three counties in central Washington state since 2010, but the cause remains unknown. Why haven’t health officials and lawmakers done more to find answers?
