Highlights of the Canadian Perinatal Health Report 2003

Abstract

In January 2004, the second “Canadian Perinatal Health Report” (2003) (1) was released by the Canadian Perinatal Surveillance System (CPSS). The CPSS collaborates with Statistics Canada, the Canadian Institute for Health Information, provincial and territorial governments, health professional organizations, advocacy groups and university-based researchers in the National Health Surveillance. This report is one of a series of reports which includes “Perinatal Health Indicators for Canada: A Resource Manual” (2000) (2), “The first Canadian Perinatal Health Report” (2000) (3), “Congenital Anomalies in Canada” (2002) (4) and the “Report on Maternal Deaths and Severe Illness” scheduled for release later in 2004. These reports fulfill part of the CPSS mandate of data collection, expert analysis and interpretation and communication of information for action. The Perinatal Health Report focuses on the current status of 27 specific indicators of the health of mothers and infants, along with temporal trends and interprovincial/territorial comparisons. Data related to the indicators is from routinely collected vital statistics, hospital discharge databases and the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (5). It includes an appendix of vital statistics data from Ontario, which has been excluded from previous reports because of data quality issues. The report also includes, for the first time, vital statistics data from Nunavut.