Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #113814

Michael Durfee, MD, ICAN National Center on Child Fatality Review, 210 Starlight Crest, La Canada, CA 91011, 6264554585, michaeld55@aol.com

Suspicious Infant Death - the “LA Model”

The Los Angeles County infant death data model connects indices in health, criminal justice and social services to study and manage suspicious infant death. Twenty five LA County infant homicides in 2001 were tracked by the ICAN Child Death Review Team to connect city, county and state indices including vital statistics homicide, FBI-UCR-SHR homicide, and social services “fatal child abuse/neglect”. The match can cross agency, county and state boundaries but was particularly problematic connecting local to state records. Infant are chosen for multiple reasons besides manageable numbers. Infant homicides provide a small, fairly pure population comprising 40% of all children killed by a caretaker and less than 5% of infant homicides caused by a non-caretaker. Connecting multi-agency indices connects records, interventions, and improves inter-agency communications. Failure to connect can block screens for child care providers or cause inappropriate sanctions. State / local infant death data raises serious questions with missing answers. Apparent discrepancies seem dismissed as “different systems and different people applying different rules”. Criminal justice infant homicides numbers are usually lower than vital stats homicide reaching zero in several large states. Different state vital statistics infant homicide rates vary up to 400%. (“51 state comparison”, ican-ncfr.org). A Pierson R analysis of 0.6 suggests an unstudied correlation with total infant mortality. Race and poverty data show unstudied disparities. The LA Model supports other child death data systems and projects statewide implementation. The model will be available to other states at ican-ncfr.org.

Learning Objectives:

• Particpants will be able to describe
• 1 two reasons to collect multi-agency data
• 2 a unique quality of suspicious infant death data
• 3 an estimate of infant homicide cases for a state with total population of five million

Keywords: Family Violence, Death

Related Web page: ican-ncfr.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.