Office of Vital Records: Beginnings and beyond engagement (BABE)
Stories of Community Engagement | September 2018
Public health professionals use both the demographic and health data contained in vital records to identify and monitor health problems, risk factors and disease patterns, and to assess the impact of interventions. Data central to identifying inequities, informing decisions, and supporting policy goals was becoming less available on birth records, and the MDH Office of Vital Records (OVR) decided to they needed to understand why more "unknowns" were appearing on birth records.
OVR launched the Beginnings and Beyond Engagement (BABE) project to bring together a cross-section of communities in order to examine current processes, tools, and attitudes involved in providing, collecting, maintaining, and using vital records birth data. Staff teams sought volunteer partners from birth registrar users across the state and selected Regions Hospital in St. Paul and St. John’s Hospital in Maplewood. Both facilities have a comparable number of annual births but belong to different health care systems, serve different populations, and vary greatly in the reporting of "unknowns." In addition to soliciting feedback from all registrars through an online survey, they shadowed and interviewed hospital staff and local public health staff. OVR leveraged their hospital partners to connect to birth mothers, too. Mothers and birth registrars underscored the need to provide context about why the data was being collected and how the data informs programs that indirectly and directly benefit mothers.
The OVR team embraced the investigative nature of the project and allowed itself the luxury of truly understanding the current state before considering and testing out improvements. The timing of BABE allowed OVR to incorporate the worksheet revision into the project, when input could be gathered more thoughtfully and deliberately. Before BABE, OVR’s usual practice had been to release an updated form and informally gather feedback for possible future revisions.
When the project ended, OVR invited all hospital and public health staff who participated in the project as well as MDH management and staff who played a role to a formal Report Out presentation, where project members shared the full range of engagement activities and lessons learned. OVR presented project partners certificates of appreciation. The meeting also allowed time for questions and interaction and hopefully provided all those who attended a better understanding and appreciation of how birth data is collection and why it is important.