| The Florida Chapter continues to advocate for the utilization of active surveillance rather than the current passive birth defects system as well as to fight for continued funding. The goal of a birth defects registry is to detect, investigate, and prevent birth defects.
The current passive system merges and analyzes information stored in existing databases. The difficulty with this is that numerous birth defects can go unidentified and there are often lengthy delays between the time of diagnosis and the availability of the data.
An active system, however, would provide for rapid and accurate identification of children with birth defects and their families as records from various clinical settings would be reviewed and reported upon. This would mean higher quality data, immediate decision-making, recommendations on service planning, allocation of resources, genetic counseling if necessary, and exploration of birth defects with environmental exposures.
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