The Electronic Report on Adolescent Pregnancy (ERAP)

Area of Science:

• Adolescent Health
• Reproductive Health
• Health Informatics

Background:

• Adolescent-oriented maternity programs require standardized data for effective care and research.
• Existing systems may not adequately capture the unique needs of pregnant and parenting teens.
• A robust data management system is crucial for monitoring outcomes and implementing best practices.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a data management system, the Electronic Report on Adolescent Pregnancy (ERAP), for adolescent maternity programs.
• To standardize key variables while allowing customization for unique program aspects.
• To guide providers in identifying risks and standardizing care for pregnant and parenting teens.
• To establish infrastructure for national data collection from this population.

Main Methods:

• Adapted a relational database framework (Microsoft Access 2000) to create ERAP.
• Designed ERAP for ease of use with minimal training on personal computers.
• Developed linked core data tables to maintain family structure during analysis.

Main Results:

• ERAP meets administrative and analytic needs of adolescent maternity programs.
• The system standardizes data collection, storage, and computation of monitoring variables.
• ERAP is adaptable for research and clinical practice translation by allowing variable and table additions.
• It structures patient care, supporting best practice guideline implementation for teen-headed families.
• Data confidentiality is ensured through password protection and anonymization for external analysis.

Conclusions:

• ERAP provides infrastructure for a national teen pregnancy databank and program-level patient monitoring.
• Standardized definitions and multi-site data collection facilitate collaboration and research rigor.
• ERAP improves care quality for teen families by promoting best practice guideline compliance.