The North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force has released its 2024 Annual Report to NC Governor Roy Cooper and the NC General Assembly. The report contains data on child deaths, updates on the Task Force’s work, and recommendations for changes in law and state funding to prevent child deaths and promote child well-being in the future.
The central part of the report was bad news since the rate of fatality of those 17 years of age and lower went up.
In 2023, the state’s General Assembly passed legislation that implemented a lot of recommendations from the Task Force, including laws and funding meant to strengthen the child fatality prevention system in North Carolina, laws to make the safe surrender of infants easier, and a law to implement a statewide firearm safety initiative.
The General Assembly also provided funding meant to prevent sleep-related infant deaths as well as money that would pay for toxicology testing for child deaths.
The state also allocated some Medicaid funding toward promoting healthy pregnancies and better birth outcomes.
In Guilford County, infant mortality has been a real focal point of local health officials and a number of programs have been put in place. And it’s clear that the state is also taking the issue very seriously.
Since the most current audited data is almost two years old, it will take a while to assess the effectiveness of new initiatives in both Guilford County and the state.
Karen McLeod, the co-chair of the Task Force, said important progress is being made but there’s a long way to go.
“2023 was a banner year for the Task Force with so many of our recommendations becoming law,” she said. “However, it’s disheartening to see overall child death rates rise for the second year in a row, and we know we have a great deal of work ahead to help advance laws and strategies to save kids’ lives.”
The latest available child death data shows that, in 2022, 1,474 North Carolina children ages 17 or younger died. The rate of child deaths overall in 2022 was an 8 percent increase over the 2021 rate – and it was also the highest recorded rate in the state since 2009.
However, the 2022 infant mortality rate remained basically unchanged from the 2021 rate, which ranked North Carolina as the 10th highest in the nation. That’s a Top Ten list you don’t want your state to be on.
Some new recommendations from the Task Force include enhancing efforts on suicide prevention and the youth mental health crisis by “seeking sustained funding for more school nurses, social workers, counselors, and psychologists and through endorsing legislation that targets addictive social media algorithms that harm kids.”
Other recommendations seek to prevent infant deaths, improve birth outcomes, and close disparity gaps through Medicaid funding and legislation that will support the creation of Fetal and Infant Mortality Review teams.
On Monday, May 13 at 11 a.m., the Task Force is hosting a webinar that will address the recently released 2022 child death and infant mortality data.
Anyone with an interest in this subject can register to attend the webinar.
One thing that has changed in the last 3 years is the addition of this Covid vaccine and more recently the addition of it to the child vaccine schedule. Is anyone looking into that or is that off limits?
Yes, I had that same question
We all know that there’s no good reason to give that questionable vaccine to children, but some Dr’s still insist. And many parents don’t do their own research. PLEASE check with the real infectious disease experts before taking any new and untested vaccine. The CDC has proven themselves unreliable for truthfulness. Check Dr’s David Brownstein and Mercola for starters
Do your own research!? Why didn’t you do your own research before posting your comment?
A quick interest search lets you find the The North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force data in both raw form and in power point summary where you will find that increase has nothing to do with the kids medical health and far more to do with mental health and poverty related issues such as gang violence.
How about YOU do some basic research before commenting. Took me 5 minutes.
highly unlikely. …but since we are just making stuff up, I suspect that guns are a statistical issue given the ages of ‘children’ includes teens.
I don’t see a link to the webinar, and could not find a link on their website.
Here is the link
https://ncdhhs-itd.webex.com/webappng/sites/ncdhhs-itd/meeting/register/09d6c1763789408f935c7936507ba5e9?ticket=4832534b0000000774b41ff3c30f059f465677bab536769c054edff748c24e99880ad1c81447e69e×tamp=1715119921974&RGID=r558ea721ad2b0400327d404ba911c7ed
They don’t know why, but you can be sure they will not consider the probable main cause: the emergency use mRNA jab.
Perhaps they should consider the impact of government control of the people. America used to be free. Nowadays we need more brave folks to take a stand if we intend to keep it that way. The silent majority is growing tired of being silent.
Re. the infant mortality rate, does this include the attempted abortions where the infant is left on the delivery table to die. I understand some Legislative bodies are trying to decide if these cases are abortion or murder!
The sharpest increase in deaths per their data is in teenagers ages 15 to 17. The number 1 cause of death being Homicide (25%), with Motor Vehicles and Suicide number 2 and 3 at 19% and 18.2% respectively and 11.3% Other Unintentional injuries the only other double digit cause.
Seems clear the focus should be on mental health and anti-gang mediation for this age group of kids.
But let the nutters comment that they blame vaccines without having looked at the data because that is what good conspiracy nutters do….just make stuff up to fit their silly ignorant biased opinions.
Could it be that there are just more children?
A 15-17 year old is a child, not “child”. Do you know that the unnecessary for children vaccine and any and all vaccines have not caused mental health issues on top of the physical issues that the side effect deniers actually admit to? If you need to resort to name calling (before truth comes out and is accepted as fact it must start as a theory – perhaps conspiracy, perhaps not) then we must have hit a nerve. We must ask questions and be allowed to ask questions (remember freedom, not “freedom”?). When that ends then truth ends (and where truth ends is where propaganda begins).
There is no mass spike in the health issues you are referring to. Health statistics are tracked nationally from a range of sources (health insurance companies for example). If what you fear were happening, there would be a spike in ‘blood clot deaths in children” (nope not happening) for example. Turns out the spike in death is mostly in older kids where many believe the correlation is social media and its overuse leading to suicide sadly. Check out the website for The North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force. There are several ppt decks that cover a range of topics about children’s health issues in NC and their proposed solutions.