SCHS Studies
A Special Report Series by the State Center for Health Statistics
1908 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, N.C. 27699-1908
www.schs.state.nc.us/SCHS/
No. 153 May 2007
What New Mothers Say:
Personal Comments from the North Carolina PRAMS Survey
by
Monique Rhames
Robert L. Woldman
ABSTRACT
The PRAMS (Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System) survey is an ongoing, population-based sur¬
veillance system sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in conjunction with
the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. North Carolina PRAMS was established in
1997 to help find out why some babies are born healthy and other babies are not. PRAMS not only uses core
questions provided by the CDC to measure the nation’s overall maternal and infant health patterns, but it also
incorporates state-specific questions to identify maternal and infant health problems in North Carolina. Dur¬
ing the course of one calendar year, approximately 2,400 women who had a live birth in North Carolina are
randomly selected from birth certificate records, sent a survey, and asked to complete it. Approximately 70
percent, or 1,600 women per year, complete the PRAMS survey.
Each month, PRAMS survey questionnaires are mailed to about 200 mothers, and non-respondents are called
on the telephone in an attempt to complete the survey. Of all of the completed PRAMS surveys, about 75
percent are completed by mail and 25 percent by telephone. Information about North Carolina PRAMS, in¬
cluding quantitative survey results, can be accessed at www.schs.state.nc.us/SCHS/prams.
This report summarizes survey information collected from mothers who participated in the mail portion of
the 2004 and 2005 PRAMS surveys. In order to get more in-depth answers to complicated health problems,
we asked women to write additional answers, comments, and opinions about their experiences before, dur¬
ing, and after their pregnancy. After all of the comments were reviewed and grouped, the topics with the highest
frequencies were selected for inclusion in this report. The ten most common topics are summarized, with a
narrative section providing a brief description of the topic, followed by the mothers’ comments and opinions.
The ten topic areas chosen were: prenatal care, folic acid (multivitamin) use, breastfeeding, smoking, alcohol
use, postpartum blues and postpartum depression, toxemia of pregnancy, Medicaid and WIC participation,
satisfaction with prenatal services, and comments about the PRAMS survey itself.
The women who volunteered written comments on the PRAMS survey are probably not representative of all
women surveyed. Women with a poor birth outcome may be more likely than others to provide comments.
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NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
