Hamilton County continues to experience higher rates of infant and child deaths that are consistently above the Healthy People 2030 goal of 5 infant deaths per 1,000 live births. African American/Black women still have the highest rate of low birth outcomes in Hamilton County. From 2018 to 2022, Hamilton County experienced an average of 79.6 infant deaths annually, 63.2 of which are Non-Hispanic Black infants, and 13.2 of which are sudden infant death syndrome (SUID).
Hamilton County Public Health (HCPH), in collaboration with a diverse group of local partners, will use surveillance data to inform and improve prevention activities to reduce SUID and sudden death in the youth (SDY) in Hamilton County. HCPH will leverage twelve years of successes and lessons learned to enhance and expand the efforts of the maternal and child health program, working in collaboration with community partners to identify and impact underserved and disproportionately affected individuals, that experience a higher burden of SUID and SDY.
Expected outcomes of this project involve increasing access to high-quality, timely data for SUID/SDY, including information on disparities and SDOH, for program improvement, and leveraging new and existing partnerships to build cohesive and sustainable programs with multiple access points within HCPH’s maternal and child health infrastructure.
Through enhanced prevention and surveillance strategies, the HPCH Epidemiology Division, in collaboration with partners will implement the following strategies:
• Identify all SUID/SDY cases within Hamilton County.
• Uniformly document case circumstances.
• Apply the CDC algorithm to derive a category for each case.
• Improve ascertainment, completeness, and timeliness of data.
• Establish Registry classification algorithm derived mortality rates.
• Conduct family health history and consent interviews.
• Analyze data to understand burden and SDOH related to disproportionately affected communities.
• Disseminate findings internally and externally to inform programs and policies.
• Develop community participatory, data-driven prevention strategies for sleep related deaths.
With this funding, Hamilton County will be positioned to expand programs and provide long-term, scalable, and sustainable interventions to address the key drivers of sudden unexplained infant death and sudden death in the young among the county’s most vulnerable populations. HCPH, in collaboration with partners, will continue to deploy more integrated and intensive maternal and child health efforts that enhance and empower local community interventions and ultimately reduce morbidity and mortality of infants in Hamilton County.