Multidisciplinary Fatality Review: Strategies for Understanding Risk and Community Impact on MCH Outcomes in the Time of COVID-19

Multidisciplinary Fatality Review: Strategies for Understanding Risk and Community Impact on MCH Outcomes in the Time of COVID-19

A fetal, infant, or child death is a sentinel event that reflects the overall health and safety of a community. Prevention-focused fatality review programs review deaths of children in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This presentation will explore child death review (CDR) and fetal and infant mortality review (FIMR); what CDR and FIMR data can show us about deaths of infants and children during the pandemic; how we can better understand risk and protective factors through effective death scene investigation (DSI); and prevention opportunities that fatality review can inform and support.

CDR and FIMR processes seek to understand systems gaps contributing to individual deaths through multidisciplinary case reviews of individual deaths. Both of these programs conduct reviews to identify risk and protective factors, needed systems-level improvements, and opportunities for intervention and prevention. They make recommendations to partners, including public health and child welfare agencies, to inform prevention efforts in their jurisdictions.

The National Fatality Review-Case Reporting System (NFR-CRS) is the data collection system serving CDR and FIMR teams across the country. It collects detailed contextual information about how a child lived and died, highlighting key risk and protective factors. The NFR-CRS is a nimble data system, and key questions related to COVID-19 were added in response to the pandemic. These questions explored the ways in which deaths that occurred during the pandemic may have been directly or indirectly related to COVID-19. This presentation will highlight key takeaways from fatality review data, including which deaths were directly and indirectly impacted by the pandemic; what the leading causes of death reviewed by fatality review teams were during the pandemic; what life stressors were present in these deaths; and how these deaths differed from other deaths.

All of the details that can be gleaned from fatality review data hinge on effective investigation of the death in the child’s community. The Child DSI Learning Series is a free resource for professionals who respond to or learn from child death investigations, including CDR and FIMR team members and public health professionals in injury prevention, infant safe sleep programs; and maternal child health (MCH). The presenters will highlight the DSI series, appropriate audiences, and the continuing education opportunities available to professionals who participate.

Fatality review is a valuable tool enhancing and informing states’ Title V needs assessment, action planning, data collection, and analysis. Fatality Review can benefit Title V programs by examining social, cultural, safety, environmental, and health systems factors that are associated with fetal, infant, and child mortality. Examples of how fatality review can inform MCH programs will be explored in this session, including enriched understanding of risk and protective factors, contextual data, and recommendations to improve community service systems and delivery. Finally, the presenters will highlight key prevention opportunities in the areas of adolescent mental health, infant safe sleep, and smoking in pregnancy.

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Description:
A fetal, infant, or child death is a sentinel event that reflects the overall health and safety of a community. Prevention-focused fatality review programs review deaths of children in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This presentation will explore child death review (CDR) and fetal and infant mortality review (FIMR); what CDR and FIMR data can show us about deaths of infants and children during the pandemic; how we can better understand risk and protective factors through effective death scene investigation (DSI); and prevention opportunities that fatality review can inform and support.