Local Child Fatality Review Team: Role of the Health Department Representative
Child Fatality Review (CFR) is a multidisciplinary process to help us better understand why children in our community die and to help us identify how we can prevent future deaths.
Local Child Fatality Review Teams will meet with varying frequency to review sudden, unexpected, and unexplained deaths, deaths investigated by DCS, and those deaths classified as undetermined, homicide, suicide, or accident, for all children under the age of eighteen. Team members will share case information on child deaths that occur in their region with the goal of preventing future deaths. In order for this team to be successful, all agencies involved in the safety, health, and protection of children must be involved.
The death of a child is a tragic event. Reviewing the circumstances involved in every death is part of our job as professionals and requires our time and commitment. Only then can we truly understand how to better protect our children and prevent future deaths from occurring.
- The health department representative can provide the team with information on:
- Contacts made between the family and the local health department offices
- Information on birth, death, and immunization records
- The health department representative can provide the team with expertise by:
- Providing information on public health prevention programs and activities
- Providing information and assistance on data collection and analysis
- The health department representative can help build bridges by:
- Learning about the policies and practices of other agencies through team participation
- Acting as liaison between the CFR team, the State Department of Health, and the jurisdictions other local health department offices