A report of the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine showed that many more babies are nowadays born prematurely. As compared to a report of premature babies carried out in 1981, in 2005 rates of sooner than it should born babies have increased with 30%. This means that of all the births registered in 2005, 12.5% were of preterm infants.

Some of the possible causes that lead to premature births can be: increased rates of in-vitro fertility, more older women that want to have offsprings, a higher rate of doctors and mothers that want the births to take place sooner than the 40 weeks term etc.

Even if studies show that more preterm born babies survive the birth nowadays, infants that are coming into the world sooner that they should be face all kinds of health problems later in life. They are at a greater risk of suffering from various health disorders such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, hearing deficits, vision conditions like crossed eyes and many other diseases.

The committee that carried out the research was chaired by Dr. Richard Behrman, a clinical professor at Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco and also a pediatrician who has been involved in treating premature babies since 1965. He claimed that the higher rate of preterm babies must be solved as soon as possible and called for labor intensive on the issue. In this respect, he stated: "yet preterm births have not received the attention and funding necessary to fully understand the causes and consequences and to reduce the numbers."