Administration to stop data collection on maternal deaths, drug use

The administration has cut staff from government departments that collect and analyze data. Casualties include the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which for more than 50 years has tracked trends in substance abuse and mental health disorders, and the team overseeing the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a collection of survey responses from women before and after giving birth that has helped the U.S. to address its high maternal mortality. As a result, the government is not measuring how society is functioning, complicating efforts for elected officials to determine the nature and scale of challenges and the effectiveness of policies to address them. In addition, critics cannot as easily quantify the fallout resulting from administration layoffs, deregulation or other policy shifts. (ProPublica article, 4/21/25)