Baer RJ, et al. - To recognize women with a high risk of preterm birth, researchers sought to develop a pre-pregnancy or first-trimester risk score. They performed a retrospective cohort analysis of a sample of 2,339,696 pregnancies drawn from California singleton livebirths from 2007-2012 with linked birth certificate and hospital discharge records. Twenty-three maternal risk factors were acknowledged that can be used to create a cumulative risk score to recognize women at the lowest and highest risk for preterm birth, regardless of race/ethnicity or socioeconomic status. Further, risk for other adverse outcomes in women who did not have a preterm birth may be recognized by the cumulative risk score. While an ineffective screening test, but the risk score seems capable of identifying women at very high risk of a preterm birth.