Student Spotlight: How did Mary Kate Leloux’s Deployment with the Minnesota Department of Health’s PRAMS Project provide a foundational experience in public health data collection processes?

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#UMNMCH student Mary Kate Leloux (MPH 2024) wrote this reflection on how her deployment with the Minnesota Department of Health PRAMS Project and passion for communities has developed her interest in representative public health data.  

PRAMS: A Story of Data to Action

I completed a year-long deployment with the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring Systems (PRAMS) program at the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH). Minnesota PRAMS conducts a population-based survey that is led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Minnesota is one of fifty jurisdictions that participate in the CDC’s PRAMS surveillance project to gather data on maternal experiences before, during, and after pregnancy. The goal of this project since its launch by the CDC in 1987 was to reduce infant mortality and the incidence of low birth weight. Although this remains a part of PRAMS efforts, its goals extend to other maternal and child health indicators, such as breastfeeding and unintended pregnancy. PRAMS also provides surveillance tracking for national objectives including Healthy People 2030. Additionally, PRAMS data is put into action to inform programmatic efforts, policy and legislation, and the Title V MCH Block Grant.

I soon found that public health provided an avenue for my new and ever-changing understanding of health to fuse with my energy for working with communities. -Quote by Mary Kate Leloux

Engaging Health in Data

My role working for the Minnesota PRAMS project primarily focused on data collection and data entry. I learned about the importance of good data collection as a solid foundation for public health research, programs, and policy. Timeliness, accuracy, and completeness are important for data collection, and become more challenging as sample size increases. Being in a behind-the-scenes position at the state level of public health gave me an appreciation for good data on health indicators for all populations available to both researchers and the public. PRAMS data has been referenced in many of my MCH courses, where I am able to draw on my personal experience with the team to provide an inside perspective on the strengths and limitations of the data. 

During my time with PRAMS, the team was preparing for a new phase of the survey (Phase 9). I participated in a review of materials including User Acceptance Testing (UAT) of the new survey in collaboration with the CDC and other jurisdictions. UAT is one of the first ways that a new survey is tested for any errors including skip patterns, spelling, answer options, and online platforms. This work allowed me to see one of the many complex steps preceding data collection with a new data collection tool and helped me understand research as a constantly evolving process. 

Some of my work also focused on creating data summaries from completion reports to identify which groups are being represented by PRAMS data and how PRAMS outreach may need to expand to capture health indicators for all populations. I created summaries of demographics such as race, age, and rurality to understand who in the sampled population answered the PRAMS survey. The demographic summaries that I created will be used to adjust the sampling to ensure that the data is representative of the population. This is necessary to identify differences in health outcome prevalence as well as tailor programs and interventions to create a healthy future for all Minnesotans. 

Now that my time with the Minnesota PRAMS team has come to a close, I am currently working for an NIH-funded research study at the University of Minnesota called Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC). In this position, I am continuing to develop my hands-on research skills by working directly with the study’s research participants to coordinate recruitment, facilitate interviews, and support the performance of heart scans that provide 3D images to screen for an important indicator protein that may contribute to heart disease. I am thankful for my new skill set in data collection, data entry, and preliminary analysis that I now take with me into my current scholarship. 

BIO

Mary Kate Leloux is a second year MCH MPH student. She received her BS from Dordt University in Sioux Center, Iowa.

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