The Birth Defect Prevention Act
Wilke, Fleury, Hoffelt, Gould & Birney, LLP - Healthcare Newsletter

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), birth defects are the leading cause of infant mortality in the United States and are responsible for one in five infant deaths. It is estimated that the cost of caring for children who are born with the 18 most common birth defects exceeds $8 billion nationally.

In 1998, Congress passed the Birth Defects Prevention Act (BDPA). The BDPA provides a number of initiatives that address the proliferation of birth defects in the United States. The federal appropriation for the BDPA for 1993 was $ 98 million. In addition to the programs developed under the BDPA, nearly every state has a program in place to monitor birth defects.

The BDPA:

• Establishes regional birth defects research programs to provide the comprehensive surveillance data and epidemiologic research needed to study clusters of birth defects, identify their causes, and develop and evaluate prevention efforts.
• Directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to operate regional centers for the conduct of applied epidemiological research on the prevention of birth defects.
• Authorizes grants to public and nonprofit entities to develop new public awareness strategies to reduce the incidence of birth defects.
• Provides funding to public entities to collect, analyze, and make available data on birth defects, including data on the causes of such defects and on their incidence and prevalence.

One program developed under the BDPA is the National Folic Acid Campaign, which promotes the consumption of folic acid by pregnant women and by women of childbearing age. Consumption of folic acid has been shown to reduce the incidence of neural-tube birth defects, such as spina bifida and anencephaly, by 70 percent.

Another public awareness program developed under the BDPA, in conjunction with the Utah Department of Health, relates to the use of isotretinoin, which is sold under the trademarked name Accutane, which injures the brains, faces, ears, and hearts of growing fetuses. The initiative aims to prevent women from using isotretinoin while pregnant or when they could get pregnant. The state also is studying why women of childbearing age use isotretinoin, despite packaging labels that warn of the danger that the drug poses to unborn children.

Under the BDPA , the CDC has established seven Centers for Birth Defects Research and Prevention. These seven sites, along with the CDC in Atlanta, are involved in a comprehensive birth defects study. The CDC is attempting to find the causes for birth defects by interviewing and collecting data from parents of both normal babies and those born with birth defects.

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