Local Review Teams


Map of Local Child Fatality Review and Prevention Teams


Local public health agencies may work together to establish regional review teams. Local public health agencies may designate another lead agency to facilitate the review process. All local review teams must form by January 1, 2015.



The CFPS State Review Team and support staff have developed a Colorado-specific operations manual to guide local review teams through the child fatality review process. Guidance includes:
  • Forming Teams;
  • Case Selection;
  • Records Requests;
  • Case Abstraction;
  • Conducting Case Review Meetings;
  • Requesting Data Analysis Support from CDPHE;
  • Secured Record Keeping;
  • Generating Prevention Recommendations;
  • Responding to the Media; and
  • Program Evaluation.

Per recent legislative update, the following are a list of duties assigned to local review teams:
  • At minimum local/regional teams must include representatives from the following agencies: local public health, county human services, local law enforcement agencies, district attorney’s office, school districts, and county coroner’s office. Representatives from other entities or groups can also be invited to participate in the local team.
  • Local/regional teams will be responsible for conducting case-specific, multidisciplinary reviews of all child deaths (ages 0-17) that occurred in the jurisdiction of the local and regional review team. CDPHE will identify child deaths that occur in each local/regional team jurisdiction and provide death certificate information to team coordinators via a secure portal.
  • The number of cases each local or regional team would be responsible for reviewing depends on the number of deaths that occur in that catchment area each year. It is possible that some local teams would not have cases to review every year. Generally, the larger the population in the local/regional team jurisdiction, the more cases the local/regional team would review.
  • Teams can choose to review other types of deaths (e.g. cancer, other medical cause deaths).
  • Local teams will be responsible for gathering cases records from a variety of sources, including law enforcement, coroner records, hospital records and human service records. Local teams will be able to determine whether they request records ahead of time or whether they ask members of the team to bring records with them to team meetings.
  • Local/regional review teams will be required to use the national web-based data collection system to report case findings and identify recommendations for improvements to local policies and practices to prevent child deaths.
  • Local/regional review teams will use the comprehensive information collected about each death to identify risk factors and prevention opportunities in a systematic way.
  • At minimum, local/regional teams will review the following causes of child fatality: 1) undetermined causes; 2) unintentional injury (e.g. drowning, falls, fires); 3) violence (e.g. homicide, any firearm death); 4) motor vehicle incidents; 5) child abuse or neglect; 6) sudden unexpected infant death; and 7) suicide.

Trainings



CFPS staff are available to consult or provide technical assistance to help local teams form. Please contact CFPS staff to ask for more information.