Pregnancy risks determined from birth certificate data--United States, 1989.

The 1989 revision of the "U.S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth" includes new items of information about medical and lifestyle risk factors related to pregnancy, birth, and method of delivery (1,2). This report presents data about three of these new items: maternal weight gain during pregnancy, smoking during pregnancy, and method of delivery. For this analysis, to allow for more in-depth comparisons, data were limited to the two largest racial groups (black and white) in the United States.