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Preventing Child Fatalities: The Role of State Child Death Review

There were 911 children under the age of 18 who died in Alabama in the year 2001. While each of these deaths is a tragedy, especially to family and friends, each one also serves as a powerful warning that other children are at risk. To better understand how and why these children died in Alabama, the Child Death Review System has been empowered to maintain statistics on child mortality; to identify deaths that may be from abuse, neglect, or other preventable causes; and from that information develop and implement measures to aid in reducing the risk and incidence of future child injury and death in Alabama. (Deaths Among Children in Alabama For The Year 2001, Alabama Child Death Review System Annual Report)

By Nina Williams-Mbengue November 2004

In 2001, more than 14,000 U.S. children under age 18 died due to homicide; suicide; and unintentional injuries, including those caused by falls, burns and motor vehicle accidents. Millions more were hospitalized or physically impaired due to unintentional injury, and hundreds of thousands were victims of some orm of maltreatment. Many of these injuries and deaths could have been prevented. During the past 20 years, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have worked to develop multidisciplinary child death review (CDR) teams that aim to better understand why children die, analyze whether a child’s death could have been prevented, and offer system-wide recommendations to prevent future death and injury due to child abuse and other preventable causes. Today, all states except Idaho and Washington have child death review programs in place at the state and/or local levels. This paper provides an overview of states’ child death review processes, examines what is known about their effectiveness, and discusses the implications for state policymakers. The report also highlights several state child death review programs and describes recent initiatives by the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to standardize the child death review process and to provide assistance to states in these efforts. Many state and local child death review teams originally were created to better identify and understand deaths due to child abuse. Today, all but five states have expanded their focus to include many other types of preventable child deaths. This report discusses all types of preventable child deaths—that include intentional homicide, suicide and unintentional injury deaths—with a particular focus on child maltreatment fatalities.

To read more, this report can be accessed by those with passwords at http://www.ncsl.org/legis/cyf/childfatal.pdf or can be purchased through the NCSL publications website.