Last year, the Surgeon General's Conference on the Prevention of Preterm Birth brought together the country's experts in research, public health, and healthcare delivery to formulate preventive strategies for this serious and seemingly intractable problem.1 Discussions held at this conference will inform a national agenda to hasten the identification of the causes, risk factors, and treatment of preterm labor and delivery.2 The agenda calls for a national system to better understand the occurrence of preterm birth and a national education program to help women reduce their chances of giving birth prematurely. The agenda also calls for improved methods for estimating the age of the fetus and studies to identify biomarkers that would signal the beginning of preterm labor.

Emphasis was placed on identifying the causes of the rise in preterm births, focusing on the etiology of late preterm births, the causes of multiple gestations, and reasons for nonmedically indicated preterm births. The biological and behavioral factors that lead to health disparities in birth outcomes are another important research focus.

Nearly 500,000 babies born in the United States (1 in every 8 births) are born preterm, and this number continues to rise. Preterm birth is a major cause of infant death and places infants at increased risk for serious lifelong disability. The annual increased cost due to preterm births in the United States is estimated to be $26 billion.

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