Newborn & Child Follow-Up

Newborn and Child Follow-Up builds the capacity of systems that serve families of children and youth with special health needs who are identified through newborn screening. Minnesota screens newborns for more than 50 medical conditions that affect an infant's health if undetected. Through newborn screening, conditions affecting metabolic, endocrine, and blood systems are identified. Newborn screening also determines if an infant's ability to breathe, hear, or digest food properly is affected. Providers work closely with parents to carefully manage these conditions once they are detected.

Newborn and Child Follow-Up collaborates with parents, health care providers, educators, local public health nurses, and others. Our goal is to reduce the impact newborn screening conditions have on children and their families. Through community partnerships, our programs connect families to statewide resources and services. These resources and services empower families with the information they need to make the best decisions possible for their child.

Newborn and Child Follow-Up activities focus on long term follow-up. Long term follow-up develops a systems-based approach for serving children with a newborn screening condition. This system makes sure necessary services are available, accessible, timely, and effective. Long term follow-up advances public health understanding of health outcomes. It also guides our understanding of the use of needed services by families of children with a newborn screening condition.

Long term follow-up includes:

• care coordination through a health care home
• evidence-based treatment following best practice guidelines
• continuous quality improvement
• new knowledge discovery

Long term follow-up connects stakeholders, processes, and outcomes through the collection, integration, evaluation, and sharing of key data and performance indicators. This means making sure that the system includes services that children need. It also ensures that those services result in the best possible outcomes for each child.

For more information:

• Minnesota's Early Hearing Detection and Intervention program
• Newborn Screening in Minnesota
• Considerations for Public Health Newborn Screening Follow-up Protocols for X-ALD, MPS I, and Pompe Disease