Information on a shoestring: a practical database at an adolescent pregnancy program

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Maternal and Child Health
• Social Work

Background:

• Adolescent pregnancy programs serve a high-risk demographic with multifaceted, ongoing needs.
• Effective program management and outcome evaluation necessitate comprehensive patient characteristic data.
• Understanding patient demographics is crucial for resource allocation and service planning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the utility of a data collection system for adolescent maternity programs.
• To present a simple, cost-effective method for gathering essential patient information.
• To highlight the importance of demographic, social, and reproductive data in program development.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of a routine data collection system at the Rochester Adolescent Maternity Program.
• Collection of demographic, social, and reproductive information from all program patients.
• System designed for simplicity and low cost.

Main Results:

• The developed system successfully collects comprehensive patient data.
• The data gathered provides insights into the characteristics of the adolescent patient population.
• The system is straightforward and inexpensive to implement.

Conclusions:

• A simple, inexpensive data collection system can effectively profile patients in adolescent maternity programs.
• Such data is vital for directing program efforts, assessing outcomes, and justifying service needs.
• This model system is transferable and beneficial for other adolescent maternity programs.