Public Health and Environmental Laboratories

After your baby is born, a few drops of blood will be taken from his or her heel, during a relatively risk-free procedure called a heel stick, and placed on a special filter paper. This filter paper is commonly referred to as the newborn screening kit or card.  here is also a section for demographics to be filled out on the newborn screening kit. It is crucial that all demographics are filled out completely by a health care provider including your baby’s last name, time of birth, time of blood specimen collection,  birthweight, if your baby has received a transfusion or not, mother’s name and address, hospital contact information, and your baby’s primary health care provider’s contact information. Inaccurate or missing information within the demographic field could affect the accuracy of screening tests and results. Subsequently, this affects the timeliness of reporting accurate screening results for your baby.

Following collection of the blood specimen, the newborn screening kit will be sent to the New Jersey Department of Health’s Newborn Screening Laboratory located in Ewing, New Jersey at the New Jersey Public Health and Environmental Laboratories. There, your baby’s blood sample will be screened for 60 disorders. Timeliness of completion of the blood spot kit, transit of the kit to the newborn screening lab, and testing is of utmost importance as these screenings are intended to detect potentially life-threatening disorders prior to your baby’s onset of symptoms.

After screening tests are completed at the laboratory, results within normal ranges will be sent to the hospital where your baby was born. However, if screening results are abnormal, they will be sent to the hospital where your baby was born and the  primary care provider listed within the demographic field of the newborn screening kit.

In the state of New Jersey parents cannot directly access newborn screening results. If you would like to request your baby’s newborn blood spot screening results, please contact your baby’s primary care provider. 

If you have changed your baby’s primary care provider since original completion of the newborn screening kit at the hospital, please have your baby’s new primary care provider submit a records release authorization form which can be found here. Please be sure that you, as the parent, sign the records release authorization form prior to your baby’s new primary care provider sending it to the newborn screening laboratory for release of the newborn screening results report.

In the state of New Jersey, parents cannot directly access newborn screening results. Therefore, the New Jersey Newborn Screening Laboratory cannot send your child’s newborn screening results to you, as the parent, or to your child. If your child is under the age of 18 and needs his or her sickle cell screening results for college athletics, please complete and sign the records release authorization form found below, and then fax or email this as a PDF file to the newborn screening laboratory office for results to be sent to the college or university requesting them or to your child’s primary care provider. If your child is 18 years of age or older, he or she will need to complete and sign the records release authorization form found here, and then fax or email this as a PDF file to the newborn screening laboratory office for results to be sent to either the college or university requesting them or to your child’s primary care provider.

Newborn Screening Laboratory Office
Phone Number: (609) 530-8371
Fax Number: (609) 530-8373
Email: NJNBS.Results@doh.nj.gov