Abstract
The authors of the article “Validation of Selected Items on the 2003 U.S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth: New York City and Vermont,” which appeared in the January/February 2015 issue of Public Health Reports,1 discovered an error in data after the article was published. The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) New York City 2009 original birth certificate data for prepregnancy hypertension and gestational hypertension contained certain errors. These PRAMS data were corrected using the official annual birth certificate file. In the complete 2,205-observation PRAMS dataset, for both variables, this correction resulted in 14 observations changing from a value of “No” to “Unknown.” The number of “Yes” observations did not change, but the denominator became slightly smaller with removal of the “Unknown” observations. As a result, birth certificate sensitivity estimates increased by 0.1 for any hypertension and gestational hypertension, but there were no changes to the prevalence, specificity, and positive predictive value estimates for these two variables.
In Table 2, “Comparison of birth certificate and medical record prevalence of insurance coverage, pregnancy history, complications, and method of delivery for infants born in New York City (January-June 4, 2009) and Vermont (January 1-August 31, 2009),” under “Medical record in New York City,” the percent (95% confidence interval [CI]) for “gestational hypertension” should be 7.8 (5.7, 10.7), and under “Birth certificate in New York City,” the percent (95% CI) for “any hypertension” should be 3.8 (2.4, 6.0).
In Table 3, “Sensitivity and specificity of insurance coverage, pregnancy history, complications, and method of delivery reported on the birth certificate for infants born in New York City (January l-June 4, 2009) and Vermont (January 1-August 31, 2009),” under “Sensitivity in New York City,” the percent (95% CI) for “any hypertension” should be 38.8 (24.9, 54.8) and for “gestational hypertension” should be 33.5 (20.1, 50.3).
In Table 4, “Positive predictive value and negative predictive value of insurance coverage, pregnancy history, complications, and method of delivery reported on the birth certificate for infants born in New York City (January 1-June 4, 2009) and Vermont (January 1-August 31, 2009),” under “Negative predictive value in New York City,” the percent (95% CI) for “gestational hypertension” should be 94.6 (92.0, 96.4).