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National Birth Defects Prevention Month and National Folic
Acid Awareness Week
January is National Birth Defects Prevention Month, and January 9--15 is National Folic Acid Awareness Week.
Birth defects affect approximately 120,000 newborns in the United States each year; they are the leading cause of infant
mortality and contribute substantially to long-term disability
(1). In 1992, lifetime care for infants born in a single year with any of
17 major birth defects was estimated to cost approximately $6 billion
(1).
The focus of this year's Birth Defects Prevention Month is preconceptional health. Health-care professionals should
encourage women of childbearing age to practice healthy preconceptional and prenatal behaviors, including taking
multivitamins containing folic acid, managing chronic medical conditions, having regular medical examinations, and avoiding
alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs.
Taking folic acid before and during early pregnancy can prevent serious birth defects of the spine and brain (i.e.,
neural tube defects). The rates of such birth defects declined 26% after folic acid was first added to cereal-grain products in 1998
via federal mandate (2).
Information on Birth Defects Prevention Month is available from the March of Dimes (http://www.marchofdimes.com) and the National Birth Defects Prevention Network (http://www.nbdpn.org). Information on National Folic Acid
Awareness Week is available from the National Council on Folic Acid (http://www.folicacidinfo.org).
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Health and Human Services.References to non-CDC sites on the Internet are
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Department of Health and Human Services. CDC is not responsible for the content
of pages found at these sites. URL addresses listed in MMWR were current as of
the date of publication.
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