Mirna Perez, Maria Rivera

Communication/Maternal health/Social media messages/Pregnancy/Birth and Infant Outcomes

Mirna Perez and Maria Rivera serve as communications experts for CDC’s COVID-19 Response Pregnancy and Infant Linked Outcomes Team (PILOT) within the Epidemiology Studies Task Force. From August 2020-April 13,2021, they have contributed 2,452 hours of service to the CDC’s COVID-19 Response. They are nominated for their exemplary efforts in generating and providing evidence-based COVID-19 information and developing prevention messages for various target audiences, especially pregnant women. In collaboration with other communication specialists serving PILOT, they develop content for CDC COVID-19 web pages and social media, electronic communications, and documentation for dissemination to internal and external audiences.

Specific accomplishments include:

Maintaining nine webpages on the CDC COVID site, including, three clinical care guidance pages and two webpages for public reporting:

Toolkit for Pregnant People and New Parents: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/communication/toolkits/pregnant-people-and-new-parents.html

The Toolkit provides COVID-19 related resources and tools to help pregnant people, breastfeeding people and new parents caring for infants. The toolkit has resources to protect this population’s health and also helps others who serve these communities communicate.

Pregnant People: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/pregnancy-breastfeeding.html

Pregnant People: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/pregnant-people.html

Breastfeeding and Caring for Newborns: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/pregnancy-breastfeeding.html

The Breastfeeding and Caring for Newborns page alone saw an 80.5% increase in page views since the PILOT communicators assumed responsibility for maintaining the page (149,039 page views in September v. 269,013 in December). The webpage had over 2.1 million page views last year since it was posted in February.

Investigating the Impact of COVID-19 during Pregnancy: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/special-populations/pregnancy-data-on-covid-19/what-cdc-is-doing.html

Clinical care guidance

Guidance on Care for Breastfeeding People: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/care-for-breastfeeding-women.html

Considerations for Inpatient Obstetric Healthcare Settings: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/inpatient-obstetric-healthcare-guidance.html

Evaluation and Management Considerations for Neonates At Risk for COVID-19: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/caring-for-newborns.html

Public surveillance data reporting

Data on COVID-19 during Pregnancy: Maternal Illness Severity: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#pregnant-population

Data on COVID-19 during Pregnancy: Birth and Infant Outcomes: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#pregnant-birth-infant

Preparing communications materials such as presentations, factsheets, graphics, newsletter content and one-pagers related to COVID-19.

Examples include sample social media messages and images for the public’s use and a series of print resources in multiple languages.

Developing and posting a 60-second public service announcement for pregnant women on COVID-19 prevention and staying healthy. This was the first of this type of resource on the COVID-19 website for pregnant women.

Developing and managing a standard operating procedure for responding to and tracking inquiries received to the PILOT emergency response functional mailbox.

As of April 13, 2021, 122 maternal health inquiries have been documented and addressed using the standard operating procedure and tracking system.

Coordinating bi-weekly peer-exchange calls to provide updates on all maternal and infant health activities across CDC COVID-19 response task forces and with home programs.

Providing response situational updates to their home division through several channels, including:

Generating monthly Emergency Preparedness and Response Updates delivered to over 200 Division staff for COVID-19 situational awareness and promotion of maternal health resources.

Reporting COVID-19 communication and staffing updates during the Division’s weekly response information share meeting.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/communication/toolkits/pregnant-people-and-new-parents.html