Data gaps in planning for comprehensive fertility-related health services

Using aggregate national data, an attempt was made in 1972 to estimate the numbers of persons who will need each of the fertility-related services (e.g., prenatal and postnatal care for wanted pregnancies, medical care of infant in its first year fertility limitation, and medical treatment of infertility) between then and 1978, and the costs of providing them. The preliminary model was later refined utilizing additional sources of data are needed to help the health care system assist individual members of the community to achieve their family formation goals. The paper includes discussions of the sorts of data that are needed and the reasons for this need, the present sources of data (in terms of providers, households, payers, and carriers), and the types of data gaps (absence, insufficient disaggregation, lack of relatedness, in complete specification). The author contends that attention to the various gaps would increase the potential of our important national surveys to produce data on numbers in need of fertility-related health services, etc. Greater comparability in questions asked and in methods of analyzing and presenting the responses could be achieved at little sacrifice of the basic purposes for which the systems were created. Recommendation is made that a step be taken to convene a small conference of key personnel working on these systems to explore the gaps and incompatibilities, propose means of overcoming them, and identify needed special studies.