Methods: Maternity Care Practices
Maternity Practices in Infant Nutrition and Care (mPINC) Survey
The 2020 mPINC survey will include all hospitals in U.S. states and territories that provide maternity care services. Similar to past surveys, screening phone calls will be made to hospitals on a rolling basis. These screening phone calls will be used to (1) determine whether a hospital is eligible to complete the survey, and (2) obtain the email address for the best point of contact to email a hospital-specific link to the survey. The survey will be online only. Learn more.
Methods
In 2007, CDC administered the first national survey of maternity care practices related to breastfeeding to every facility in the United States and territories that routinely provided maternity care services. Known as the Maternity Practices in Infant Nutrition and Care (mPINC) survey, this survey is a national census of facilities routinely providing maternity care.
The initial survey established measures of practices in place at intrapartum care facilities across the United States and territories and showed how the practices varied by state. CDC administered the survey every other year thereafter until 2015 to monitor and examine changes in practices over time. After the 2015 administration, CDC redesigned the survey to reflect changes in maternity care practices that had occurred in the United States over the past decade. The newly designed survey launched in 2018.
Each survey year we screen hospitals by telephone. We contact the mother-baby nurse manager or the manager of the labor and delivery unit to help identify the best person to complete a survey that includes questions about infant nutrition, such as breastfeeding, using formula to feed healthy newborns, and feeding routines. Because we follow this process each time that we administer a new survey, the person identified to receive the survey one year is not necessarily the person identified to receive the survey in a later cycle.
It is extremely important for the validity of the survey that we follow the same protocol to identify survey recipients at each hospital as described above. Battelle, the contractor implementing the 2020 mPINC survey for CDC, will contact each hospital. Hospitals do not need to contact CDC or Battelle directly unless they have received the survey link and have a question related to the 2020 survey.
See what is being asked on the 2020 mPINC survey. For more information about the mPINC survey, visit our Hospital FAQs webpage. If you have additional questions, email them to mPINC@cdc.gov.
