Senator Hassan Presses RFK Jr to Reinstate Critical Program for the Research of Maternal and Infant Health

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care, is pressing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reinstate the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), which is the only nationwide system that tracks the experiences of women and their infants before, during, and after birth. As the United States faces a maternal health crisis, the Department of Health and Human Services chose to shut down PRAMS at the start of the Trump Administration in January 2025. PRAMS helped lawmakers and public health officials across the country develop and strengthen programs to protect maternal and infant health by providing a nationwide snapshot of the challenges that women face during prenatal and postpartum care, their mental and physical health, and the health of their babies.

"Before January 2025, the federal Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, or 'PRAMS,' was the only nationwide system that helped us understand whether the programs that are intended to reduce maternal and infant deaths are working. Each month, states asked women who have recently given birth about their health and experiences before, during, and after pregnancy," Senator Hassan wrote in a request to Secretary Kennedy to restore the program. "For decades, this information had been collected, anonymized, and posted in the PRAMS system by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, providing a nationwide snapshot of the challenges that women face during prenatal and postpartum care, their mental and physical health, and the health of their babies."

The Senator continued, "Researchers and policymakers have used information from PRAMS to design programs that stop preventable maternal and infant deaths. For example, the system helped health workers in New Hampshire more effectively screen for and treat substance use in pregnant women... I am deeply concerned that disruptions to PRAMS have left permanent gaps in our understanding of maternal and infant health."

Hassan is pressing Secretary Kennedy and his department to restore the PRAMS program, reinstate the staff working on it, and make all data on material and infant health that has been collected in the last year and half publicly available. Hassan's push to restore PRAMS is supported by several organizations including the March of Dimes and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

"It cannot be overstated how important PRAMS is to the collective effort to improve U.S. maternal and infant health outcomes,"said Camille A. Clare, MD, MPH, CPE, FACOG, President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. "For nearly 40 years, PRAMS has been the only tool we have that captures detailed, self-reported, state-specific information on topics such as prenatal and postpartum care, mental health, breastfeeding, housing, and income. This information gives ob-gyns important insights into maternal behaviors and experiences that help improve care delivery. Yet, for more than a year, PRAMS has been unable to function optimally without the necessary staff to provide states with analysis and technical assistance. It is imperative that PRAMS staff be reinstated so that we can stay abreast of emerging issues and continue monitoring changes in maternal and infant health that will ultimately help save lives."

Senator Hassan has led a number of efforts to ensure that new and expecting mothers have access to high-quality health care. Last year, Hassan led her colleagues in introducing the bipartisan Rural Obstetrics Readiness Act to support rural health care facilities in providing urgent obstetric care. The bill advanced from committee in July. Senator Hassan and the New Hampshire Congressional delegation also had previously fought to secure nearly $1 million in federal funding for Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center to strengthen maternal health care in the North Country. She introduced the Keep Obstetrics Local Act (KOLA), to help keep labor and delivery units in rural and underserved communities stay open, and the bipartisan Healthy Moms and Babies Act to strengthen health care for women before, after, and during childbirth. In 2023, thanks to Senator Hassan'sbipartisan legislation to improve mental health for new mothers, the Department of Health and Human Services launched theTask Force on Maternal Mental Health.

Read the full text of Senator Hassan's request to Secretary Kennedy here or below.

Dear Secretary Kennedy:

The United States faces a maternal health crisis. A larger share of American women and infants die from preventable causes than women and infants in peer nations. Despite this crisis, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services chose in January 2025 to shut down the only nationwide system that helps the public track the performance of federal programs that are intended to keep mothers and babies from dying preventable deaths. We urge you to immediately reinstate access to this centralized system and publicly release unpublished data from the past year and a half.

Before January 2025, the federal Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, or "PRAMS," was the only nationwide system that helped us understand whether the programs that are intended to reduce maternal and infant deaths are working. Each month, states asked women who have recently given birth about their health and experiences before, during, and after pregnancy. For decades, this information had been collected, anonymized, and posted in the PRAMS system by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), providing a nationwide snapshot of the challenges that women face during prenatal and postpartum care, their mental and physical health, and the health of their babies.

Researchers and policymakers have used information from PRAMS to design programs that stop preventable maternal and infant deaths. For example, the system helped health workers in New Hampshire more effectively screen for and treat substance use in pregnant women. In West Virginia, the state used PRAMS to identify high rates of unintended pregnancies among women battling addiction and used that information to target resources and reduce the number of babies born with opioid withdrawal syndrome. Through PRAMS, the State of Maine found that pregnant women in that state used tobacco at a high rate, and in response, Maine created a new program to support smoking cessation among pregnant and postpartum women.

In January 2025, the administration shut down the PRAMS software that states use to collect maternal health data and the portal that the public used to access it. This forced many states to stop collecting responses for an average of three months, and in some cases for as long as eight months. You fired the CDC staff responsible for managing the program and have yet to restore the system that researchers used to study national PRAMS data.

I am deeply concerned that disruptions to PRAMS have left permanent gaps in our understanding of maternal and infant health. I urge you to reinstate the CDC staff working on PRAMS, restore public access to the portal for studying national PRAMS data, and release PRAMS data that has not been made publicly available for the past year and a half.

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