Alcohol and Other Drug-Related Birth Defects Awareness Week --
May 11-17, 1997
The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD)
has
designated May 11-17, 1997, as Alcohol and Other Drug-Related Birth
Defects
Awareness Week. During this week, CDC, in collaboration with NCADD,
will
highlight the harmful effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on a
fetus.
From 1991 to 1995, rates of alcohol use during pregnancy
increased,
especially for frequent drinking, underscoring the need for renewed
attention to advising pregnant women to abstain from alcohol use.
Associations between adverse pregnancy outcomes and moderate to
heavy
alcohol use during pregnancy continue to be reported. Health-care
providers
should educate women about the recommendations of the Surgeon
General (1)
and the Secretary of Health and Human Services (2) regarding the
need for
women who are pregnant or are planning a pregnancy to abstain from
alcohol
use.
State health departments can use state-based rates of reported
frequent
alcohol use by women of childbearing age to develop messages aimed
at
preventing alcohol use among pregnant women. In conjunction with a
report
in this issue of MMWR about alcohol use among childbearing-aged and
pregnant women, the Council of State and Territorial
Epidemiologists is
providing state health departments and Behavioral Risk Factor
Surveillance
System coordinators with information focusing on fetal alcohol
syndrome
(FAS) and state-specific rates of self-reported alcohol use among
women of
childbearing age.
Additional information about Alcohol and Other Drug-Related
Birth
Defects Awareness Week is available from NCADD, telephone (212)
206-6770;
World-Wide Web, http://www.ncadd.org; and from the National March
of Dimes,
telephone (888) 663-4637, http://www.modimes.org. Additional
information
about FAS and other alcohol-related birth defects and developmental
disabilities is available from CDC, telephone (770) 488-7268,
http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/programs/programs.htm; and from the
National
Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, telephone (301)
443-3860,
http://www.niaaa.nih.gov.
References
Anonymous. Surgeon General's advisory on alcohol and pregnancy.
FDA
Drug Bull 1981;11:9-10.
Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, Agriculture Research
Service, US
Department of Agriculture. Report of the Dietary Guidelines
Advisory
Committee on the dietary guidelines for Americans, 1995.
Washington,
DC: US Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Research Service,
1995.
Disclaimer
All MMWR HTML versions of articles are electronic conversions from ASCII text into HTML. This conversion may have resulted in character translation or format errors in the HTML version. Users should not rely on this HTML document, but are referred to the electronic PDF version and/or the original MMWR paper copy for the official text, figures, and tables. An original paper copy of this issue can be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), Washington, DC 20402-9371; telephone: (202) 512-1800. Contact GPO for current prices.
**Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to mmwrq@cdc.gov.
