Prenatal and Newborn Screening Timeline

During my tenure on the 2013 Consumer Task Force on Newborn Screening, I had the opportunity to dream up a project that would help educate my community about newborn screening.  This project was supported through Baby's First Test by grant number UA8HP11070 from the Bureau of Health Professionals, Health Resources and Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The goal of my project was to develop a resource about newborn screening that could be used to educate expectant mothers about this life-saving test during pregnancy.  Right now, the vast majority of newborn screening education occurs in the hospital during the actual screening test, which takes place 24-48 hours after a baby is born.  As any new mother can attest, 24-48 hours after giving birth is a very busy time and certainly not the best time to adequately convey anything beyond the most basic information about newborn screening. 

With this project, I was hoping to give prenatal care providers (Obstetricians, Gynecologists, Midwives, etc.) a piece of literature that was relevant to their patients during pregnancy and introduced the topic of newborn screening at a less chaotic time.  After all, prenatal care proviers have 9 months of appointments with their patients, while the lab tech who performs the newborn screening usually only has a few minutes.  Thus, the idea to marry prenatal screening tests with newborn screening was born!

After months of work with some incredibly creative and talented design students at  Metropolitan State University of Denver, my prenatal and newborn screening timeline was developed.  It is a two-sided, tri-fold pamphlet that I hope many prenatal care providers will pass out during their initial appointments with expectant mothers.  It provides a checklist for pregnant women to navigate the various prenatal testing and includes the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecologists recommendations for what week of pregnancy certain tests can be expected to be performed. The newborn screening information is covered on the inside of the pamphlet along with a link to the Baby's First Test website for more information.  There is also a space for important contacts and appointment notes to be jotted down and I hope that lots of people will think to hang this on their refrigerator or bulletin board to refer to throughout pregnancy. 

If you or anyone you know would like a PDF of this literature, it can be downloaded from many places including the Baby's First Test website and the NewSTEPS website.  Please be sure to do a test print before setting your printer up for multiple copies. You might need to adjust the printing preferences to flip the pages on the short edge since the adobe default is to flip the pages on the long edge.