West Virginia’s Response to CDC-RFA-DD-23-0003, Pregnant People-Infant Linked
Longitudinal Surveillance
Led by the (Social Security Act) Title V agency for the State of West Virginia, the Office of
Maternal, Child and Family Health (OMCFH), the purpose of the West Virginia Longitudinal
Informatics & Network Collaborations (WVLINC) project is to link all maternal and infant
population-based surveillance systems used in West Virginia to improve and expand Neonatal
Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) surveillance and evaluation efforts, thus advancing the quality,
efficiency and timeliness of data related to exposures and outcomes for pregnant people, infants,
and children.
The WVLINC project is made possible via durable partnerships between the OMCFH, the West
Virginia Health Statistics Center, the West Virginia University Department of Pediatrics, the
Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) Bureau for Medical Services (State
Medicaid agency), the DHHR Bureau for Behavioral Health (federally designated state authority
for mental health and substance use disorder), the DHHR Bureau for Social Services (designated
state entity responsible for extending and improving child welfare services), the West Virginia
Health Information Network (WVHIN) Health Information Exchange (HIE), and the West
Virginia Board of Pharmacy.
Although this is population-based NAS surveillance, the targeted population for this work will
include all people with a completed Prenatal Risk Screening Instrument (PRSI – aka
uniform maternal risk screening tool) in West Virginia. Data will be analyzed using the
characteristics of this population such as exposures and outcomes, ethnicity, race, gender,
socioeconomic status, geographic location (ex, rural, urban, county, etc.), barriers to care (e.g.,
transportation, insurance, etc.) and any other long-standing social and health inequities identified
in this work.
The WVLINC project will make possible the availability of timely, high-quality, modern and
efficient surveillance data related to reporting of key exposures and outcomes that impact
pregnant people, infants, and children. Likewise, the WVLINC project will empower the
OMCFH to establish a robust data system across multiple years (from pregnancy into childhood)
that will effectively inform efforts to improve the health and wellbeing of West Virginia citizens
