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Annual Review Sees Patterns in Gun, Dating Violence in St. Joseph County Child Deaths

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Infant mortality rates were down in St. Joseph County, Indiana in 2018, but more teens died from intimate partner violence.

The St. Joseph County, Indiana Child Death Review Team meets annually to go over the numbers and individual cases of preventable deaths in children age one to 18.

In 2018 it reviewed 18 deaths. Ten teens, six children and assisted with review of two preventable infant deaths.

Betsy McCue is the 2019 chair of the committee.

“So the whole point of this is to look at deaths and consider if they were preventable and if there’s anything we can do as a community or system-wide to prevents deaths of children.”

From this year’s data the group is looking to boost dating violence education in county schools and community based gun violence prevention efforts.

In 2018 there were five gun related child deaths, they came out of two zip codes, 46619 and 46628; which are the west and northwest zipcodes of South Bend.

Two of the homicide deaths among teens were tied to dating violence.

The group’s sister the Fetal and Infant Mortality Review team researched 25 deaths in 2018 down from 36, which the county partially attributes to a campaign on safe sleep.

 

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