Child Death Review (CDR) and Fetal and Infant Mortality Review (FIMR) teams are natural partners for state Maternal Child Health Title V programs. Fatality review teams such as FIMR and CDR review deaths to identify system gaps impacting the health and safety of their community. Title V programs can use these findings to develop, support and evaluate programs. In this webinar, Abby Collier of the National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention described the fatality review process, with a focus on data collection, and provided examples of how fatality review supports Title V work. Additionally, written guidance on how fatality review can support national performance measures on adolescent mental health, including youth suicide, infant safe sleep and smoking during pregnancy were highlighted and distributed. Karen Nash of the Children’s Health Alliance of Wisconsin shared her agency’s innovative partnership between CDR and Title V. Wisconsin is disseminating CDR recommendations to appropriate, parallel Title V programs working with target populations. Dr. Rebecca Spicer, an active member of the Children’s Safety Now Alliance (CSN-A), moderated this webinar.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Abby Collier, MS is the Director at the National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention (National Center), a program of the Michigan Public Health Institute. In this role, Ms. Collier leads the National Center in providing technical assistance and support to local and state child death review (CDR) and fetal and infant mortality review (FIMR) programs throughout the United States. One of her focus areas is building collaboration between CDR and FIMR. Ms. Collier provides training on a variety of topics, including improving death scene investigations, best practices for CDR/FIMR reviews, self-care and vicarious trauma, writing prevention recommendations, implementing evidence-based recommendations, advocacy and engaging partners.
Karen Nash, MBA is the Project Manager of the Children’s Health Alliance of Wisconsin, where she works to reduce the burden of injury and fatality to children and young adults through leadership of Wisconsin’s comprehensive Child Death Review (CDR) Program. Karen’s main role is to provide technical assistance to CDR teams statewide by helping them to learn and understand the case review process, collect information that translates into useful data, and use data to inform recommendations that will prevent similar deaths. Karen is a natural at establishing and maintaining partner relationships, then working collaboratively to identify barriers and implement strategies that lead to improved local and statewide childhood injury prevention outcomes.
Rebecca Spicer, MPH, PhD. With a background in epidemiology, Dr. Spicer has conducted research in the fields of injury control, traffic safety, and drug and alcohol abuse prevention for over 25 years. She has extensive experience in rigorous study design applied to program and policy evaluation and has directed large research projects focusing on injury and violence prevention. Dr. Spicer has a special interest in injury costs and she updated the method to calculate quality of life impacts of motor vehicle-related injuries for use in federal regulatory analyses. Currently, much of her research focuses on transportation injury epidemiology and examining the impact of advanced automotive technologies. Dr. Spicer is an active member of the Children’s Safety Now Alliance (CSN-A).