New Jersey Department of Health Best Practices for Case Ascertainment

The New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) Project W is a participating jurisdiction in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Surveillance for Emerging Threats to Mothers and Babies Network (SET-NET) which aims to understand the effects of emerging and reemerging threats on pregnant people and their infants. SET-NET collects health information of jurisdictions on people exposed to a health threat during pregnancy and their infants over time. These data are then used to inform clinical decision-making and public health action.​ SET-NET monitors infectious disease threats during pregnancy which include Zika, Congenital Syphilis, Perinatal Hepatitis C, and most recently COVID-19.

Since May 2020, the NJDOH Project W has been abstracting information from Medical Records of pregnant people infected with SARS-CoV-2 and the infants born to them and reporting this data to SET-NET. Most recently, Project W has begun to also report syphilis and exploring congenital cytomegalovirus infection as additional conditions.

As a result of participating in the SET-NET Network, NJDOH has identified best practices and lessons learned when implementing case ascertainment. This has been achieved through developing effective interprofessional partnerships by successfully monitoring and performing surveillance of emerging health conditions through secondary data analysis.