1 Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA 30333
We read with great interest the commentary of Aase et al entitled "Do we need the term fetal alcohol effects (FAE)?"1 As a public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been working with states and academic organizations to develop and evaluate prevention programs for fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). A fundamental component of such programs is the design and implementation of population-based surveillance systems for FAS to track the magnitude of the problem to assess temporal trends related to intervention programs.2,3