The Potential for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Prevention of a Harmonized Approach to Data Collection about Alcohol Use in Pregnancy Cohort Studies

Nancy Poole, Rose A. Schmidt, Alan Bocking, Julie Bergeron and Isabel Fortier
Additional contact information
Nancy Poole: Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health, Vancouver, BC V6H 3N1, Canada
Rose A. Schmidt: Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health, Vancouver, BC V6H 3N1, Canada
Alan Bocking: Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System, Toronto, ON M5G 1X5, Canada
Julie Bergeron: Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center, Montreal, QC H3H 2R9, Canada
Isabel Fortier: Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center, Montreal, QC H3H 2R9, Canada

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: Prenatal alcohol exposure is a leading cause of disability, and a major public health concern in Canada. There are well-documented barriers for women and for service providers related to asking about alcohol use in pregnancy. Confidential research is important for learning about alcohol use before, during and after pregnancy, in order to inform fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) prevention strategies. The Research Advancement through Cohort Cataloguing and Harmonization (ReACH) initiative provides a unique opportunity to leverage the integration of the Canadian pregnancy and birth cohort information regarding women’s drinking during pregnancy. In this paper, we identify: The data that can be collected using formal validated alcohol screening tools; the data currently collected through Canadian provincial/territorial perinatal surveillance efforts; and the data currently collected in the research context from 12 pregnancy cohorts in the ReACH Catalogue. We use these findings to make recommendations for data collection about women’s alcohol use by future pregnancy cohorts, related to the frequency and quantity of alcohol consumed, the number of drinks consumed on an occasion, any alcohol consumption before pregnancy, changes in use since pregnancy recognition, and the quit date. Leveraging the development of a Canadian standard to measure alcohol consumption is essential to facilitate harmonization and co-analysis of data across cohorts, to obtain more accurate data on women’s alcohol use and also to inform FASD prevention strategies.

Keywords: prenatal alcohol exposure; cohort harmonization; FASD prevention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/11/2019/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/11/2019/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:11:p:2019-:d:237740

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().