October 2017
BABE Project — Report and Recommendations
The Office of
Vital Records (OVR) launched the BABE Project – Beginnings and Beyond
Engagement – on March 1, 2016, to gather information about the birth
registration process, learn how birth data helps to accomplish public health
objectives and to support the advancement of health equity. OVR also wanted to
understand why “Unknown” responses to data items for mothers’ race,
ethnicity, education level, and cigarette use before and during pregnancy had been increasing over the previous
three years. Mothers self-report these data items during the birth registration
process.
During the same three years that “Unknown” responses were
trending upward for some items self-reported by mothers, awareness about how
determinants of health (social, economic and behavioral factors) create health
was growing.
OVR engaged key stakeholders: hospital staff who collect
birth data, public health professionals who use birth data, and the mothers who
provide the data. Through this cross-section of communities, we examined the processes,
tools, and attitudes involved in providing, collecting, maintaining, and using
vital records birth data.
A key deliverable of the BABE project was revising the “Mother’s
Worksheet”, the primary tool in gathering the mother’s self-reported
information. Because the new worksheet has little room for explaining why the
information is collected, OVR created an instruction cover sheet to complement
the worksheet. In early October, the new Worksheet
for creating your child’s birth record and Instructions to register your child’s birth were ready for
statewide use. Using the same worksheet across Minnesota promotes data quality
and integrity, and is an important step in creating the birth record and informing
public health.
Although
the BABE project didn’t set goals to reduce the percentage of unknown
responses for the four self-reported data items, unknown responses for mothers’ race, ethnicity, and cigarette use
before and during pregnancy decreased (see the graph below). OVR
is monitoring the trend on these as well as other data items based on
performance reports from the
National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), which sets and monitors data quality standards for
birth records in
the United States.
See the Beginnings
and Beyond Engagement (BABE) Birth Registration Project Report and
Recommendations (PDF) for more information.
Year One
Starting in tax
year 2016, parents who experienced the stillbirth of a child in Minnesota were
eligible for a $2000 tax
credit. Parents may have qualified for the credit if:
-
the stillbirth of their child occurred during the tax year
- a Certificate of Birth Resulting in Stillbirth was issued for that child
- the child would have been claimed as a dependent if the child had been born alive
- they filed Minnesota Schedule M1PSC, Credit for Parents of Stillborn Children 2016
The tax credit is available for each stillbirth that is required to
be reported to OVR. Thus, if parents experienced the fetal deaths of twins, they
would have been eligible to claim $4,000.
The Minnesota Department of Health and the Minnesota Department of Revenue collaborated
to operationalize the tax credit after the bill passed early in 2016. In
September this year, the two departments met to review the validation process and findings after the first tax year of the credit to consider improvements for future
years.
The Department of Revenue received and processed over 200
claims for the Credit for Parents of Stillborn Children during the 2016 tax
filing “season”. Full-year residents filed most of the claims for the credit, and
some part-year residents claimed a partial tax credit, as allowed by Minnesota
Statutes, section 290.0685. This means that nearly half of the fetal deaths that qualified
for the tax credit resulted in parents who received the credit.
Only
fetal deaths that are required to be reported under Minnesota law qualify for the tax
credit. Unlike birth and death certificates, county vital records offices
do not issue Certificates of Birth Resulting in Stillbirth. These certificates are
issued by the Office of Vital Records. Applications and information about the
Certificate of Birth Resulting in Stillbirth are available on the Minnesota
Department of Health Requesting a
Certificate of Birth Resulting in Stillbirth webpage.
Tax forms and detailed instructions about the Credit for
Parents of Stillborn Children are available on the Minnesota
Department of Revenue - Credit for Parents of Stillborn Children website.
The Office of Vital Records
renewed the state contract for security paper with Ameritech/Northstar. This
contract allows all Minnesota vital records offices to order paper as needed
and benefit from volume pricing. The renewal, effective October 1, 2017,
continues the same security features for Minnesota birth and death
certificates. County and local offices may order paper directly from Northstar.
Please follow the instructions and use the forms on the Security
Paper webpage.
Did you know that the Office of Vital Records hosts a
webpage named Minnesota
Death Search 1997 to the Present? This tool may be just what a county assessor
needs. County child support personnel may also find the tool useful in case
management.
Electronic death registration started in 1997 so anyone may
use this “lookup” to verify a death occurring after 1996. Although the index updates
in real-time, some records do not appear in the index until weeks or even
months following the death because not all death registrations happen
immediately after the event.
The person looking to verify a death only needs the first
and last name of the deceased, and the date of birth or the deceased’s Social Security Number.
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