Youngest of children most likely to die of homicide, disease

Two-thirds of children who die in Colorado each year never make it to age 5, and they are much more likely to die at the hands of an abusive parent or caregiver than school-age kids.

Among older Colorado children, suicides are climbing at an alarming rate while deaths in car crashes are dropping, according to the latest state health-department statistics.

From 2006 to 2011, 86 children from birth to age 4 were killed by homicide in Colorado. That compares with 14 kids ages 5 to 14 who were homicide victims in those same six years.

The death-certificate data are analyzed each year by a state committee of emergency-room doctors, law officers, coroners and other child advocates who look for ways to save kids' lives.

In January, that committee — part of the Colorado Child Fatality Prevention System — will ask lawmakers to require teachers and counselors who work with children and teens to take courses in suicide prevention. The group also wants Colorado to increase the minimum age for a driver's permit to 16 from 15 and the minimum age for a driver's license to 17 from 16.

And the committee wants lawmakers to expand the restricted hours for new drivers, from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. instead of the current midnight to 5 a.m.

"Behind every number is a child's life, and many young lives could be saved through actions on the part of informed adults and communities that support them," said Chris Watney, president of the Colorado Children's Campaign. "Public policy both at the state and national levels must be part of creating safe and healthy communities, and I expect these issues to be an important focus of Colorado's upcoming legislative session."

Vehicle deaths down

Stricter laws regarding teenage driving and safety seats are credited, at least in part, for the decrease in the number of children dying in vehicle crashes. Still, car accidents were the leading cause of death in this state for teens ages 15 to 19 until the past three years, when more teens killed themselves than were killed in vehicle crashes.

In 2011, 36 teens in that age group were killed in motor-vehicle accidents compared with 43 who were victims of suicide.

Since the child-fatality-prevention system was mandated by state statute in 2005, it has pushed the legislature to strengthen the booster-seat law, which now says children up to age 8 must sit in a booster seat while riding in a vehicle. The group also urged lawmakers to increase support for the state's office of suicide prevention, which received a $ 100,000 boost last year.

Suicide trends revealed by the data are particularly troubling. Even among kids as young as 10 to 14 years old, suicide is climbing. Four kids in that age group killed themselves in 2006. Last year, that number rose to 10.

Among the youngest children, about half died from natural causes — many of them birth defects but also a large portion from "sudden unexpected infant death."

The high number of infant sleep deaths led the committee to find out more specifics on how those children died. Among the 56 infants who died in their sleep in 2010:

• 43 percent were sleeping in a bed with one or more adults.

• 23 percent lived in a home where there was no crib.

• 45 percent were sleeping in a bed or crib with soft pillows or blankets.

The fatality-prevention committee plans to ask hospitals this year to expand programs to teach new parents about safe sleeping habits for infants. The group will push hospitals to create policy regarding safe sleep and use it in their nurseries and in the rooms of new mothers, said Lindsey Myers, injury- and violence-prevention unit manager for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. For example, hospitals could prohibit parents from sleeping with their babies in their beds while in the hospital.

The outreach to hospitals will come in the committee's first "community recommendation report," an expansion of the group's annual legislative report that makes recommendations to lawmakers. The committee does not have legal power to force community change but plans to do so by issuing public recommendations and then following up with progress reports.

"Catalyst for ... action"

The heart of the committee's operation "is to act as a catalyst for public- health action," Myers said.

The committee is separate from a state-review team based at the Colorado Department of Human Services that looks into the death of every child who was previously known to the child-welfare system. Still, the health department's child-fatality committee does review deaths by abuse and neglect.

The group found that in a three-year period, 22 percent of child-abuse and neglect deaths were caused by the biological mother's boyfriend.

Because of that statistic, the state sought a grant to fund parenting classes for young fathers. Young dads, many of them linked to the program through their probation officer, learn techniques to calm their temper when dealing with children.

The state also received funding to train juvenile-justice-system workers in suicide prevention after statistics showed children involved in the system were more likely to kill themselves.

Jennifer Brown: 303-954-1593, jenbrown@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jbrowndpost

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