PROJECT ABSTRACT – COMPONENT A (CORE SURVEILLANCE) The Pregnancy Risk Assessment and Monitoring System (PRAMS) was initiated in 1987 as part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initiative to reduce infant mortality and low birth weight. In recent years, the program has been expanded in support of CDC’s Safe Motherhood Initiative to promote healthy pregnancies and the delivery of healthy infants. PRAMS is an ongoing, population-based surveillance system designed to identify and monitor selected maternal experiences and behaviors that occur before and during pregnancy and during the child’s early infancy among a stratified sample of women delivering a live birth. Missouri PRAMS has been collecting data since 2007 about the health and well-being of women before, during and shortly after pregnancy and during the child’s early infancy. These data are not routinely available from other sources and can be used to identify groups of women and infants at high risk for health problems and adverse pregnancy / birth outcomes. Missouri PRAMS data is also extremely helpful in monitoring changes in health status of women and children in the state, identification of emerging health issues and measuring progress towards goals in improving the health of mothers and infants in Missouri. Missouri PRAMS uses a standardized data collection methodology developed in accordance with the CDC PRAMS Model Surveillance protocol required for all PRAMS grantees. This standardized approach allows for comparisons among states and for optimal use of the data for single-state or multistate analysis. Each month, a stratified random sample of women delivering a recent live birth is drawn from the state’s birth certificate file and data is collected from this sample of women through mail and telephone modes. The data is weighted so that findings can be applied to the state’s entire population of women with a recent delivery. Missouri PRAMS continues to be a key resource for program planning, improvement, evaluation and policy development. During this project cycle, Missouri PRAMS will continue to collect high quality data and will further enhance its efforts towards data analysis, linkages, dissemination and translation with a life-course perspective approach.