ADH: Birth Certificate Data

The Arkansas APCD includes birth certificate data from the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) Vital Statistics registries on all vital events- birth, death, marriage, divorce, fetal deaths, and induced termination of pregnancies. 

ADH Birth Certificate data contain records for births that occurred in the state of Arkansas in years 2013 forward. The birth certificate data available to data requesters is for live births only and not fetal deaths. Births in which baby has one breath is considered a life birth. For each live birth in this case will have a corresponding death certificate.

Each record represents an Arkansas child and birth parents and can be linked to the Arkansas APCD health insurance claims data and other non-claims based data using the APCD Unique ID.

Note, in 2014, the Arkansas Department of Health upgraded its systems therefore birth certificates recorded in 2014 forward include data elements not previously captured. Also, some data elements captured in the 2013 data were not carried forward. The years of data availability are included in each data element description. Coverage percentages reflect the missing data for 2013 and 2014.

For example, BC008 - WEIGHT_POUNDS is available for years 2014 forward. 2013 data will contain NULLs. The overall Coverage percentage reflects all years, not just 2014 forward when it was available.