Abstract
New Hampshire Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID) and Sudden Death in the Young
(SDY) Registry
CDC-RFA-DP18-1806
Abstract: The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Public
Health Services, Bureau of Population Health and Community Services, Maternal and Child
Health Section (MCH), in partnership with the New Hampshire Department of Justice, Office of
the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), seeks to continue the work of its Sudden Unexpected
Infant Death (SUID) and Sudden Death in the Young (SDY) Registry Project. Its purpose is to
improve surveillance systems to monitor incidence and characteristics of SUID and SDY
following the National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention Protocols. The project will
help the state understand incidence, trends, and characteristics of SUID and SDY, building on its
success of identifying cases, compiling case information, and conducting its SUID and SDY
multidisciplinary review meetings. With parental consent, autopsy specimens on cases meeting
Centers for Disease Control SDY Project criteria will be sent by the OCME to a national
biorepository for inclusion in the National Institute of Health’s supported research on deaths
related to cardiac and seizure disorders.
The anticipated outcome of the SUID/SDY Project is to produce high quality, complete, timely
surveillance data to improve investigations, identify risk factors, and inform policy, prevention
and health promotion strategies and activities aimed at reducing infant and child deaths.
Participation in the national research activities will contribute to better identification of the
incidence and risk factors of SDY deaths, leading to data driven strategies, earlier identification
of risk factors, and prevention efforts.
In New Hampshire, between 2005 and 2015, 68% of the deaths in children, birth through
eighteen, were due to natural causes. Infants comprise the majority (70%). New Hampshire has
experienced the diagnostic shift seen nationally of infant deaths from Sudden Infant Death
Syndrome (SIDS) to “Undetermined”. Deaths that meet the Centers for Disease Control
definition of SUID are the state’s second leading cause of natural infant death.
The New Hampshire SUID/SDY Project, consisting of the Maternal and Child Health Section’s
Project Coordinator and Injury Prevention Data Surveillance Program Coordinator, and the
Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s Data Clerk and Chief Forensic Investigator, will assure
that suspected SUID and SDY deaths are identified, autopsied, and reviewed by a
multidisciplinary review group following grant protocol. The state’s Child Fatality Review
Committee members comprise the core of the SUID and SDY Review Groups, which are
supplemented by SUID and SDY-focused additional members. This includes a clinical review
panel of cardiac, neurology, genetics and forensic pathology specialists. Project staff will assure
that case data entry into the Data Coordinating Center of the National Center for Fatality
Review and Prevention case registry, analysis, follow up, and quality assurance is carried out,
and that all project activities meet the SUID and SDY Registry Project’s identified outcomes and
timeframes.
