Mildred Maldonado-Molina, Ph.D., gave two presentations at the Society for Prevention Research 26th Annual Meeting held in Washington, D.C. from May 29-June 1.

On May 30, Maldonado-Molina presented “Health Indicators for Maternal and Child Health: Linked Datasets from Multiple Population-Level Data Sources in Florida.” The presentation was among several invited talks in a session entitled “Leveraging Linked State Administrative Data to Optimize Prevention Science,” which is part of the National Institutes of Health’s Big Data initiative.

Maldonado-Molina is an associate professor in the Department of Health Outcomes & Biomedical Informatics in the College of Medicine at UF and director of UF’s Family Data Center. Her work is conducted as part of a contractual agreement with Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration.

Maldonado-Molina provided an overview of her team’s work developing a 15-year linked data repository of 38 health indicators for maternal health and child health outcomes on all Florida women and children. The repository hosts multiple linked statewide data sources including birth, death, and fetal death certificates; Medicaid eligibility, encounters, and claims; hospital discharge, ambulatory, and emergency records; Healthy Start prenatal screens; Perinatal Intensive Care records; Early Intervention Program records; among other medical records.

On June 1, Maldonado-Molina presented a poster entitled “Using Population Informatics Framework to Understand Health Disparities in Maternal Health and Infant Outcomes in Florida.”

“This linked repository allows health care providers and state, and local agencies to understand patterns associated with race/ethnicity and birth outcomes,” Maldonado-Molina said. “This is particularly important in understanding the social, cultural, and contextual factors associated with access to care and health outcomes.”

Identifying both the protective and risk factors linked to maternal health and adverse birth outcomes is essential for reducing health disparities and improving outcomes, particularly for minority women and children, Maldonado-Molina said.