September is Newborn Screening Awareness Month

Giving everyone a chance to live a healthy life right from the start raises the bar for everyone. Investing to protect Washington’s youngest population is critical for everyone’s health and well-being

We have the duty to define and adopt rules for screening Washington-born infants for heritable conditions. State rules determine the list of conditions for which all newborns must be screened. To establish which conditions to include in the newborn screening panel, we convene a technical advisory committee to evaluate conditions using an established set of criteria.

During the August 14 public meeting, Board staff updated members on the rulemaking activity, shared the feedback and comments received during the rule’s formal comment period, and discussed the significant analysis of the rule. After a public rules hearing, members passed a motion to adopt the proposed amendments to the newborn screening rule, and directed staff to file a CR-103 and establish an effective date.

In 2017, staff from the Board and Department of Health convened a technical advisory committee to evaluate Pompe and mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS I) against the Board’s criteria for possible inclusion in the NBS panel. The recommendations from the advisory committee were presented to the Board in August of the same year. Members passed a motion to initiate rulemaking to add Pompe and MPS I to the NBS panel, and Board staff filed a CR-102, proposed rule, in July 2019.

The Board anticipates the Department of Health will begin screening newborns for Pompe and MPS I beginning in October 2019.

Additionally this year, the Board filed a CR-101, which is an announcement to the public that we are considering updating a rule, to add spinal muscular atrophy to the list of mandatory conditions for newborn screening. Read more information about this rule update from our January public meeting summary from earlier this year.

Want to read more? Here is a list of materials and links to the TVW broadcast from our August 14 public meeting as well as a link to the rulemaking web page.