Columbia World Projects at Columbia University created the Postpartum Assessment of Health Survey (PAHS) project to gather and study data that will help a participant site (i.e. Commonwealth of Virginia) to understand the needs, inform program and policy, and improve the health and wellness of its postpartum mothers.
By focusing on the year after birth, this project fills an important gap in data collection that could inform interventions to improve maternal-child health in our state and nationally. Virginia participates annually in the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), a health surveillance project overseen by the CDC. While PRAMS collects data from mothers in the immediate postpartum period (2-4 months after the birth of their child), it does not address maternal health and social needs later in the postpartum period. The PAHS project will provide essential data and analyses on the unmet needs of postpartum mothers that will be highly valuable to the Virginia Department of Health.
The Virginia Department of Health participated in the first round of PAHS in 2021 (sampling those who gave birth in 2020) and looks forward to collaborating again for the next round of data collection in 2025.
For more information about PAHS, and how it is part of a five-year study, read this Columbia World Project article: Leveraging Policy to Improve Maternal Health in the Fourth Trimester | Columbia World Projects