Listed below are links to tabulations which provides information on trends in low birthweight, including the proportion of infants born with birthweight <1,500g, 1500-2,499g, and <2,500g, and in preterm birth, including gestational age <32 weeks, 32-36 weeks, and <37 weeks. These data are provided for all white, and black infants and for the state and your health district.

Statewide, for both white and black infants, birthweight distributions are remarkably stable, with a persistent disparity in birthweight between black and white infants. This disparity is greatest for very low birthweight, with a 2.5-3 times greater proportion of birthweight <1,500g among black compared to white infants. The disparity in the frequency of low birthweight (<2,500g) is slightly lower, approximately 2-fold. This disparity in birthweight distribution accounts for approximately 80% of the overall gap in infant mortality between black and white infants.

While birthweight trends have been stable, there have been modest declines in the proportion of infants born at <32 weeks of gestation, from 1.7% in 1990 to 1.3% in 1997 among white infants and from 3.8% to 3.4% among black infants. This is a seemingly contradictory observation: stable trends in very low birthweight but a slight decline in extreme prematurity. One possible explanation for this, which has been documented in a recent Canadian study, is an increase in the precision of gestational age measurement as the result of increased use of prenatal ultrasound, contributing to an apparent shift in gestational age trends.

We have not provided the full detail of race/ethnicity data as done in several earlier reports. However, using the CD-ROM data sets that we have provided, you should be able to duplicate and extend these tabulations.

As an update on the status of our data dissemination, several weeks ago we sent by e-mail to the data contacts in each district the birth-death linked files for the 1994-1996 birth cohorts. A copy of these files is also being disseminated on an updated CD-ROM which is being distributed this week. That CD-ROM also contains an updated version of the 1994 birth file which corrects an error in the maternal age variable that was on the version we distributed in January.

In addition to these tabulations, over the past several months, we have disseminated the following tabulations:

• Infant mortality for 1990-1997
• Teen births, induced abortions, and fetal deaths/spontaneous abortions, 1990-1997
• WIC and Medicaid enrollment, 1996
• An update of the WHO birthweight-infant mortality "gap" analysis

We are working to make these spreadsheets available to public health staff via the Division's Web page. At present, these will not be available to the general users who log onto the Web site, but will be available to those public health staff who have registered under "Health Statistics" on the web page and have been given higher level access.

These tabulations were prepared by the Peraintal Epidemiology Unit, which has been recently re-named as the Maternal and Child Health Epidemiology Unit. If you have questions about these data, or are interested in receiving a full set of these tabulations for each health district, please feel free to contact us at 404-657-2588.

Data for Georgia
Birthweight-Specific Fetal and Infant Mortality,
1994-1996 Birth Cohorts

All of these charts are in pdf format.