Sudden and unexpected infant, child, and adolescent deaths are an indication of a community’s health and should elicit a collective response, including efforts to understand the circumstances and risk factors in order to prevent future deaths. Children’s Health Alliance of Wisconsin (Alliance) has been funded since 2012 for Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID) surveillance and 2014 for Sudden Death in the Young (SDY) surveillance. During this time our experience and findings from SUID and SDY have been used to drive statewide safe sleep prevention, death scene investigation training, and community conversations about preventable deaths. The Alliance is enthusiastic to continue this important SUID/SDY surveillance to further the understanding of risk factors among Wisconsin families with the long-term outcomes of reducing SUID/SDY incidence and standardizing the investigation and reporting of these deaths.
The purpose of the SUID and SDY Case Registry is to use Wisconsin’s existing death review systems and strong partnerships to establish SUID and SDY incidence through complete and timely case identification, review, categorization and data entry. Wisconsin will continue to utilize SUID and SDY surveillance to inform local and state prevention and ultimately reduce sudden and unexpected infant, child and adolescent deaths in Wisconsin.
The Alliance will achieve the following outcomes by the end of the grant period: 1)
Increase local and state stakeholder access to complete high-quality statewide SUID surveillance, and SDY surveillance for the southeastern counties of Kenosha, Milwaukee, Racine and Waukesha; 2) Decrease the percentage of missing and unknown priority variables for SUID statewide and SDY for selected counties, thus increasing the completeness and quality of the SUID and SDY surveillance data; 3) Decrease the percentage of cases that do not meet the timeliness standards for identification, review, data entry, advanced review (SDY only) and quality assurance; 4) Increase the federal and state stakeholder understanding of SUID/SDY incidence, including incidence by SUID and SDY category; 5) Maintain creation of Wisconsin’s annual SUID report to inform local and state partners in their programmatic and policy prevention efforts; and 6) Increase support to local partners, including health departments and CDR teams, to utilize and disseminate SUID data, and SDY data where applicable, in their prevention efforts and in collaborations with their stakeholders.
The Alliance is applying for the SUID Core Component 1, statewide SUID surveillance of infants and the SDY Optional Expanded Core Component 2 for the following Wisconsin counties: Kenosha, Milwaukee, Racine and Waukesha. The attached letters of support and memorandums of understanding will demonstrate the strong partnerships and capacity of the Alliance to conduct SUID/SDY surveillance.
