Infant and Child Death Review teams flag sleep‑related deaths, drownings and firearm involvement in adolescent suicides

Hope Mullins, director of injury prevention at Arkansas Children’s, and Dawn Porter, community program supervisor for the Arkansas Infant and Child Death Review (ICDR) program, presented the ICDR annual executive summary to the committee and described prevention recommendations derived from case reviews.

Mullins and Porter said Arkansas recorded 470 deaths of children ages 0–17 in 2020, of which 188 were eligible for ICDR review and 110 were reviewed; the remaining eligible cases were not reviewed largely because they were subject to criminal investigation or because pandemic impacts limited review capacity. The presenters said the ICDR program has 11 regional teams that cover 75 counties and that the act establishing the program requires teams to review eligible deaths.

Presenters described manner‑of‑death breakdowns in reviewed cases: motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause among accidental deaths reviewed, sleep‑related asphyxia accounted for a higher share of asphyxiation deaths, drownings were more frequent in pools than open water, and there were 18 suicide deaths reviewed with firearms identified as a leading contributing factor among adolescent suicides. ICDR representatives said undetermined deaths often involved adult beds and sleep environments, and that local teams make prevention recommendations such as safe‑sleep education and community outreach.

Committee members asked for additional detail on whether case reports include information about available sleeping equipment in the home and for regional breakdowns of suicide and undetermined deaths. Presenters said they collect those data and would provide follow‑up information and regional analyses to the committee.