Each year since 1999, the Maternal and Infant Health Assessment, or MIHA, survey has been sent to a small number of people across California who recently had a live birth. MIHA includes questions about experiences before, during and shortly after pregnancy, and questions about their new baby. Data from MIHA are used to monitor the health of California’s birthing population, and to inform the development of health policies and programs for California families. MIHA is a collaborative effort of the Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Division and the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Health Equity.

MIHA is a partnership between the California Department of Public Health’s Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Division and the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Health Equity.

UCSF has partnered with SSRS, a full-service research company, to collect the data.

You can explore findings from previous years in the MIHA Data Snapshots Dashboard.

To keep current with the study, you can join the MIHA mailing list here.

If you have recently given birth, your name may be picked by chance, like in a lottery, from the state birth certificate registry. If you are chosen, you will receive an invitation to do the MIHA survey online, by mail, or by text. You may be contacted by an interviewer to do the survey over the phone. Because you are one of a small number of people who were randomly chosen to participate, your answers are very important, and no one can take your place.

If you were selected, you can complete the survey in one of three ways:

1. You can respond to the survey online by clicking here.
2. You can respond to the survey over the telephone by calling one of our interviewers at 1-888-614-0569.
3. You can fill out the paper survey that you have or will receive in the mail.

We offer a special gift to each participant who completes the survey.

Yes, the survey is available in English and Spanish. You can answer the survey in Spanish online, over the phone with one of our Spanish-speaking interviewers at 1-888-614-0569, or on paper.

Yes! Only a small number of people will receive the survey each year. Each pregnancy is different and there’s a lot we don’t know about what affects health during pregnancy. To get a better overall picture of the health of California families, we need every person who receives the survey to complete it. Your answers may help improve the health of families in California in the future.

The MIHA survey collects information from participants about their experiences and behaviors before, during, and after their pregnancies that might affect their health and the health of their babies. Many different things in a person’s life may affect their and their baby’s health — even some things that don’t seem to be about pregnancy and birth outcomes. Even events that happened before pregnancy can sometimes affect a pregnancy and the baby’s health. The MIHA questions are designed to gather information about the many aspects of a person’s life that can affect their health and the health of their baby.

Yes. Your name and contact information have been used by our research team only to contact you. We will not connect them to your survey answers. The answers given by all the participants who respond to the survey will be grouped together to give us information on California overall. Information that identifies you will be kept secure. We do not ask about immigration status. Protecting your personal information is our highest priority.

Yes, we have a list of resources available here.

If you have any questions, please email us at info@mihaforca.org or call us at 1-888-614-0569.

For information on your rights as a research participant, please call the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects at (916) 651-5599.