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Illinois

Past Assignee: From May 2002 until May 2005, there was an assignee located in the Illinois Department of Human Services.

Past Fellow: From June 2004 until May 2005, there was a master’s prepared fellow working with the assignee.

Projects/Impacts:

• Unintended pregnancy in Illinois: Prior to the state’s capacity to analyze PRAMS data, unintended pregnancy at birth was estimated as 16% based on 18 month intercontraceptional spacing of live births from the vital statistics data. Using PRAMS data, Illinois’s unintended pregnancy rate at birth, defined as births that were either unwanted or mistimed pregnancies, is among the highest in the nation. Therefore, the findings from the unintended pregnancy data analysis conducted by the CDC assignee became the centerpiece for the MCH Block Grant application. In response, the Family Planning program is using the demographic profile of high-risk clients who are most likely to experience a pregnancy while taking contra captives to better target effective methods, address side effects, and stress consistency of use. Efforts are on the way to disseminate this information to the many public health partners who are addressing unintended pregnancy in the state.
  
• Breastfeeding initiation, duration, and predictors among WIC Participants: The purpose of this project was to examine the effects of trimester of enrollment in WIC, number of WIC prenatal visits; and identified WIC Risk Factors to determine the best predictors of duration of breastfeeding (> 6 months). Records from Cornerstone were selected if a woman was on WIC during the year July 1, 2001 through June 30, 2002. The results indicated that the women least likely to breastfeed were younger than 20 years of age, single and black. Highest initiation rates were among women over 25 years of age, Hispanic ethnicity, and college educated. Smokers were significantly less likely to breastfeed. Outcomes of this project will be distributed to the Coordinator of WIC, and the statewide Breastfeeding Coordinator. Possible development into a paper is under consideration.

State related publications:
None to report

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Page last reviewed: 2/8/08
Page last modified: 3/6/06
Content source: Division of Reproductive Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion