Announcement: Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week — February 7–14, 2016
Weekly / February 5, 2016 / 65(4);98
Altmetric:
Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week, held February 7–14, is an annual observance to promote awareness and education about congenital heart defects (CHDs). Heart defects are costly and critical conditions that persons live with throughout their lives. CHDs affect nearly 1 in 100 births every year in the United States and are the most common type of birth defect (1,2). Some heart defects can be diagnosed prenatally using ultrasound, some might be identified during newborn screening using pulse oximetry, and others might be discovered by clinical exam or when the person becomes symptomatic. An estimated 2 million children and adults in the United States are living with a CHD today (3). CDC’s Stories: Living with Heart Defects website includes personal stories written by persons affected by CHDs (http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/stories/heartdefects.html).
CDC works to track and research CHDs through many different efforts, including 1) working with state tracking programs to evaluate newborn screening for critical congenital heart defects;* 2) funding state programs to track birth defects,† including CHDs; 3) funding several research centers§ across the nation to help understand the causes of birth defects, including CHDs; and 4) launching projects focused on tracking persons with CHDs across the lifespan.
CDC-funded research recently reported risks for certain CHDs in babies of mothers who were exposed to pesticides at work (4) and a reduction in CHD risk for mothers with better diet quality (5). CDC research also determined that children with CHDs receive special education more often than children who do not have birth defects (6). CDC’s congenital heart defects website has additional information regarding congenital heart defects (http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/heartdefects).
References
- Hoffman JI, Kaplan S. The incidence of congenital heart disease. J Am Coll Cardiol 2002;39:1890–900. CrossRefexternal icon PubMedexternal icon
- Reller MD, Strickland MJ, Riehle-Colarusso T, Mahle WT, Correa A. Prevalence of congenital heart defects in metropolitan Atlanta, 1998-2005. J Pediatr 2008;153:807–13. CrossRefexternal icon PubMedexternal icon
- Marelli A, Gilboa S, Devine O, et al. Estimating the congenital heart disease population in the United States in 2010—what are the numbers? J Am Coll Cardiol 2012;59:E787. CrossRefexternal icon
- Rocheleau CM, Bertke SJ, Lawson CC, et al. ; National Birth Defects Prevention Study. Maternal occupational pesticide exposure and risk of congenital heart defects in the National Birth Defects Prevention Study. Birth Defects Res A Clin Mol Teratol 2015;103:823–33. CrossRefexternal icon PubMedexternal icon
- Botto LD, Krikov S, Carmichael SL, Munger RG, Shaw GM, Feldkamp ML; National Birth Defects Prevention Study. Lower rate of selected congenital heart defects with better maternal diet quality: a population-based study. Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed 2016;101:43–9. PubMedexternal icon
- Riehle-Colarusso T, Autry A, Razzaghi H, et al. Congenital heart defects and receipt of special education services. Pediatrics 2015;136:496–504. CrossRefexternal icon PubMedexternal icon
Suggested citation for this article: Announcement: Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week — February 7–14, 2016. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2016;65:98. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mm6504a7external icon.
MMWR and Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report are service marks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Use of trade names and commercial sources is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.
References to non-CDC sites on the Internet are
provided as a service to MMWR readers and do not constitute or imply
endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. CDC is not responsible for the content
of pages found at these sites. URL addresses listed in MMWR were current as of
the date of publication.
All HTML versions of MMWR articles are generated from final proofs through an automated process. This conversion might result in character translation or format errors in the HTML version. Users are referred to the electronic PDF version (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr) and/or the original MMWR paper copy for printable versions of official text, figures, and tables.
Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to mmwrq@cdc.gov.