One in 33 babies in the United States are born with birth defects. But a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is raising awareness of ways to lower that risk.

The study points to five risk factors that public health officials — and, in some cases, women themselves — can do something about: obesity, diabetes, smoking exposure, food insecurity and low levels of folate (an essential vitamin that helps the body produce cells).

According to the study, 66% of women ages 12 to 49 have at least one of these risk factors, and 10% have three or more. The CDC’s findings, published Tuesday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, are based on responses from 5,374 women who completed the agency’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2007 to 2020.

“We

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