Fiscal Year 2015: Colorado Child Fatality Prevention System Annual Legislative Report

The Fiscal Year 2015: Colorado Child Fatality Prevention System Annual Legislative Report is now available. The report includes a summary of child fatality review findings and data, updates about CFPS prevention activities, highlights of the CFPS program, and the prevention recommendations prioritized by the CFPS State Review Team. 

The following recommendations were prioritized:

1. Mandate the use of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Sudden Unexplained Infant Death Investigation Reporting Form (SUIDIRF) for law enforcement agencies and coroner offices during infant death scene investigations.
2. Mandate that hospitals develop and implement policies to provide education and information about infant safe sleep promotion and to require the practice and modeling of safe sleep behaviors in labor/delivery and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) hospital settings. 
3. Modify Colorado Department of Human Services’ rules regulating family foster care homes to better align with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) infant safe sleep recommendations, including training for foster families regarding infant safe sleep.
4. Establish a statutory requirement that allows for primary enforcement of Colorado’s adult seat belt law, making it possible to stop a driver and issue a citation if anyone (the driver and all passengers in all seating positions) in the vehicle is not properly restrained.
5. Increase funding for the Office of Suicide Prevention to implement the following activities: 1) expand the Gun Shop Project to more counties in Colorado; 2) expand the implementation and evaluation of Emergency Department-Counseling on Access to Lethal Means (ED-CALM)training statewide; and 3) expand implementation and evaluation of school-based suicide prevention programs statewide that promote resilience and positive youth development as protective factors from suicide.
6. Support policies that impact the priorities of the Colorado Essentials for Childhood project: 1) increase family-friendly business practices across Colorado; 2) increase access to child care and after school care; 3) increase access to preschool and full-day kindergarten; and 4) improve social and emotional health of mothers, fathers, caregivers and children.
7. Provide funding for the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention to promote uptake of the Quad-Regulator Policy for Prescribing and Dispensing Opioids through increased training and education of prescribers.
8. Increase funding to Child Fatality Prevention System to support the implementation and evaluation of youth programs that promote pro-social activities, resilience and positive youth development as protective factors from child fatalities statewide.

Feel free to disseminate this report to your partners.