The GBDRIS Pilot Project began in May 2003. The pilot involved 17 hospitals and medical centers. The two hospitals with the highest number of births from each perinatal region were selected, and the seven Regional Perinatal Centers were included if they were not one of the top two birthing hospitals. Reporting forms/files were collected from the pilot sites on a monthly basis. Line listings of all cases in each public health district have been sent to the appropriate Children 1st personnel with the request for updates and follow up information. This will help to ensure that children identified through GBDRIS are receiving appropriate public health services.

The number of times sites reported ranged from 1 to 10 with an average of 6 times in 2003. The number of reports sent by a site ranged from 60 to 1101 with an average of 319 total reports. We are currently developing deduplication algorithms and data-cleaning programs for the GBDRIS data. Data integrity checks will be completed prior to analysis and report generation. We plan to generate an annual report containing programmatic data each year along with the monthly line listings for Children 1st staff.

Due to the success of our pilot project we have begun to expand our surveillance statewide in three phases. Each phase consists of approximately forty hospitals. The first set of hospitals were selected based on the number of births. The final phase will involve other health care and individual providers.