Panel adds public-health language and gives favorable report to child-fatality advisory changes

The subcommittee voted to give Senate Bill 845 a favorable report as amended after adopting a committee amendment to clarify public-health language. The bill would add the executive director of the Commission for Community Advancement and Engagement to the State Child Fatality Advisory Committee and permit certain officials (the state child advocate, a county coroner/medical examiner, or a solicitor) to appoint designees to serve in their place.

Miss Knox, vice chair of the state Child Fatality Advisory Committee and affiliated with the Children’s Trust of South Carolina, described the committee’s statutory mandate to review completed investigations of unexpected, unexplained, suspicious or criminal child deaths since 1993 and said the committee has reviewed just under 4,000 such deaths. She told members the committee will soon release a report summarizing recent cases and methodologies.

Members focused on a statistic in the packet noting that roughly 27% of reviewed deaths were classified as "undetermined." Miss Knox said many of those cases include unsafe-sleep circumstances and that the forthcoming committee report will provide a breakdown showing how unsafe sleep factors appear across manner-of-death categories. Dr. Dolores DeCosta, executive director of the Commission for Advancement and Community Engagement, said her agency’s research on infant mortality and cultural differences could help the advisory committee sharpen cause-of-death classification and reduce the number of undetermined cases.

The committee adopted a proposed amendment changing a reference from the director of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control to the director of public health. The amendment was adopted by voice vote and the subcommittee subsequently voted to give S.845 a favorable report as amended.