Arizona child fatality report 2023

The Arizona Child Fatality Review Program’s (CFRP) goal is to reduce child deaths in Arizona by conducting a comprehensive review of all child deaths to determine what steps could have been taken, if any, to prevent each child’s death. This year’s report was just released.

CFRP is a program reviewing every death that occurs in the state of Arizona for newborns up to the age of 18. The deaths are reviewed at a local level by small teams.

Dr. Mary Rimsza, chair of the Arizona Child Fatality Review Team, joined Arizona Horizon to discuss the report.

“We have a great deal of data that we acquire and determine the risk factors of the deaths,” Dr. Rimsza said.

Each year, Dr. Rimsza and her team hope that the legislature and other policymakers look at the recommendations. The community and individual parents also play a big role.

“We found that 45% of the deaths were actually preventable,” Dr. Rimsza said, “The infant mortality rate increased, and suffocation was the most common cause.”

A total of 74 babies were lost and 95% of those deaths occurred in unsafe sleeping environments, according to the report. Dr. Rimsza said there is a lot of misinformation that parents receive through the media.

“The good news in this year’s report is that there was a 30% drop in drowning deaths,” Dr. Rimsza said.