Arizona Child Fatality Review Team: Twenty-Ninth Annual Report
Twenty-Ninth Annual Report November 15, 2022 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. In 2021, 863 children died in Arizona, an increase from 838 deaths in 2020. The leading causes of death were prematurity, congenital anomalies, motor vehicle crashes, firearm injuries, and suffocation. Prematurity was the most common cause of death for neonates (infants less than 28 days old) while suffocation was the common cause of death among infants 28 days to less than 1 year of age. Drowning was the most common cause of death in children 1-4 years of age as 68% of the 44 drowning deaths occurred in this age group. The drowning death rate doubled from 2020 to 2021. Of the 863 deaths, 410 (48%) were determined to be preventable by the local review teams. The three most common causes of preventable death