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This Child Fatality information provided by the Injury & Violence Prevention section of the Office of Disease Prevention & Epidemiology.
This report is a review of child deaths in Oregon in 1999, from Oregon's Child Fatality Review (CFR) process. It is the only report of child death that combines all that is known across community systems. As a result, it is a rich source of detail regarding circumstances surrounding unexpected deaths among Oregon children and youth. The data in this report are presented in a way that is familiar to many injury epidemiologists, but may be unfamiliar to other readers. Deaths are categorized by two parameters: by cause or mechanism (e.g., falls, motor vehicle crash, firearm, suffocation, drowning, etc.) and by manner or intent (e.g., unintentional injury, homicide, natural, suicide, and undetermined). Presenting the data in this way allows, for example, a suicide by poisoning to be discussed both as a poisoning death and as a suicide death ? each with different, but equally important implications for prevention. Why Do We Need Child Fatality Review in Oregon? The death of a child is a terrible tragedy that diminishes all of us. While a review of how our children have died will not bring those children back to life, it does serve important functions at many levels. For the families of these children, a review serves to bear witness to their tragedy and may help find something positive out of that suffering: the identification of opportunities to prevent similar deaths among other children and families. For local communities, the review process helps ensure that every effort is undertaken to make those communities safe for children. Data collected during the local review process are pooled with statewide data. Aggregation of this information at the state level allows for the rational development of sensible state-level policies and programs to assure the safety of our children. Without a mechanism to collectively examine the deaths of children in our communities we might miss this opportunity to perform one of the most basic functions of government - protecting its citizens. In the 10 years since its creation by the Oregon Legislature, the value of this process has enabled its growth and improvement. We now have review teams in all Oregon counties, staffed by community members who understand from their own experience the value of this process. As described in the following pages, communities have developed and implemented numerous prevention activities such as education and outreach to the public on the dangers due to drowning, fire, and motor vehicle crashes. Local and state teams have participated in developing and supporting legislation to improve safety for Oregon's children. The state level team through the activities of the State
Technical Assistance Team (STAT) has played a critical role in supporting local teams by providing data, training and coordination of local teams, thereby helping to ensure that child deaths are appropriately investigated. In addition, STAT has linked what is learned from these investigations with prevention opportunities. For example, the death of a child from delayed treatment of neurocysticercosis, a parasitic infection of the brain led to the discovery that this is a relatively common disease in certain population groups. This in turn will be used to develop
an educational effort for clinicians to help prevent similar missed opportunities for prevention.
Accomplishments in Preventing Child Death in Oregon Many CFR members provided testimony and supported this work. On many teams participated in
activities to prevent child death and worked on the prevention recommendations listed in this report. See pages 34-35 for a more detailed list of some of the local team prevention activities. We applaud the good work of many indi-viduals, agencies and organizations dedicated to the health and welfare of children, however, there is a great deal of work still to be done. We encourage Oregonians to embrace the prevention recommendations listed in this report.
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