Statewide SUID surveillance and categorization in Wisconsin and improvement of death scene investigations - Descriptive title: Statewide SUID surveillance and categorization in Wisconsin and improvement of death scene investigations. 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 (the Alliance) has been funded since 2012 for Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID) surveillance. During this time, our experience and findings from SUID have been used to drive statewide safe sleep prevention, death scene investigation (DSI) trainings, and community conversations about preventable deaths. The Alliance is enthusiastic to continue this important work to further the understanding of risk factors among Wisconsin families with the long-term outcomes of reducing SUID incidence and standardizing the investigation and reporting of these deaths. The purpose of the SUID Case Registry is to use Wisconsin’s existing death review systems and strong partnerships to establish SUID incidence through complete and timely case identification, review, categorization and data entry. Wisconsin will continue to utilize SUID surveillance to inform local and state prevention and ultimately reduce sudden and unexpected infant 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, 2) Decrease the percentage of missing and unknown priority variables for SUID statewide, thus increasing the completeness and quality of SUID surveillance data, 3) Decrease the percentage of cases that do not meet the timeliness standards for identification, review, data entry, and quality assurance, 4) Increase the federal and state stakeholder understanding of SUID incidence, including incidence by SUID category, 5) Maintain creation of Wisconsin’s annual SUID report to inform local and state partners in their programmatic and policy prevention efforts, 6) Increase support to local partners, including health departments and CDR teams, to utilize and disseminate SUID data in their prevention efforts and in collaborations with their stakeholders, and 7) increase the number of complete scene investigations and doll re-enactments for SUID cases by equipping Wisconsin agencies with the necessary tools and skills to conduct thorough investigations. The Alliance is applying for Component A to perform statewide SUID surveillance and categorization, and Component C to increase the availability of DSI trainings in areas with the highest need. The attached letters of support and memorandums of understanding will demonstrate the strong partnerships and capacity of the Alliance to conduct SUID surveillance and manage annual statewide DSI trainings.
