Center for Child and Family Health

MPHI’s Center for Child and Family Health (CCFH) collaborates with multi-disciplinary stakeholders to prevent infant and child mortality, promote oral health, strengthen supports to vulnerable populations, and increase the health and well-being of children and families. Staff work on surveillance and data management systems, policy compliance monitoring, program evaluation, needs assessments, training and technical assistance, and quality improvement projects. CCFH has over twenty years of partnership with Michigan’s Child Welfare state and local staff.

Center Highlights

Michigan Fatality Review and Prevention Initiatives

CCFH’s Michigan Fatality Review and Prevention (MRFP) uses various strategies to lift up the life stories of children and adults in Michigan who have died in order to prevent future fatalities.

Birth and Mortality Data Systems Improvement Initiatives

In-depth, accurate, and consistent mortality data is the cornerstone of implementing effective public health policies and initiatives.

Family Strengthening and Support Initiatives

Working to ensure children and families can thrive within their communities by establishing systems rooted in family well-being, prevention, and equity.

Michigan Overdose Fatality Review (MOFR) Program

To understand and prevent overdose fatalities, MPHI’s Center for Child and Family Health (CCFH) partnered with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded Michigan Overdose Data to Action team and Michigan State Police’s Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Use Program (COSSUP) to establish local Overdose Fatality Review (OFR) teams across Michigan. OFRs involve a series of confidential death reviews by county-based multidisciplinary teams, which include several public health and safety partners. An OFR team examines a decedent’s life cycle, including substance use history, comorbidity, major health events, social-emotional trauma, encounters with law enforcement, treatment history, and other factors, to facilitate a deeper understanding of opportunities for prevention and intervention involved in overdose fatalities. The recommendations that OFR teams develop can inform data-based decision-making and assist communities in identifying and addressing service gaps and systemic barriers to prevention.

The Michigan Overdose Fatality Review (MiOFR) Program was established in 2020 and continues to expand across the state. CCFH is actively onboarding new county level OFR teams and providing technical assistance and support to existing OFR team coordinators, case abstractors, and team members. Additionally, CCFH facilitates an OFR State Advisory Group that supports standardizing OFR practices and procedures and reviews local OFR recommendations.

To learn more, please visit the MiOFR website.

Michigan Family Resource Center (MiFRC) Network

In partnership with Children Trust Michigan (CTM), MPHI’s Center for Child and Family Health (CCFH) provides technical assistance and support to the MiFRC Network, which was established in September 2021. Michigan’s Family Resource Centers (FRCs) are community-led, family-centered organizations that partner with caregivers to deliver supports and services that respond to each family’s individual needs and values. FRCs are places where families can connect with one another and with resources they value – including culturally responsive supports offered within and outside each center. FRCs are committed to creating safe, nonjudgmental, welcoming environments where all families feel that they belong, feel a sense of ownership, and can see themselves reflected.

FRCs aim to reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect using the evidence-based Strengthening Families Approach. The foundation of the approach consists of five protective factors found to build family strengths and foster a family environment that promotes child and youth development. These protective factors include:

Parental resilience
Social connections
Concrete supports in times of need
Knowledge of parenting and child development
Social and emotional competence of children

The FRC model focuses on advancing primary prevention initiatives and encourages public and private agencies to work together and to become more preventative, responsive, flexible, family-focused, strengths-based, and holistic. Together, the MiFRC Network can leverage and coordinate the collective impact of its members. Creating opportunities for service providers to meet formally and informally, exchange information, make connections, develop relationships, build capacity, and address challenges that no one organization could on its own.

Michigan Child Death Review (CDR) Program

In partnership with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) that spans more than 25 years, MPHI’s Center for Child and Family Health (CCFH) manages the Michigan Child Death Review (CDR) program. This includes providing guidance, technical assistance, and annual training to local CDR teams covering all 83 Michigan counties and coordinating the Michigan Child Death State Advisory Team and the Citizens Review Panel on Child Fatalities.

The death of a child is a profound loss, not only for the child’s parents, family, and friends, but also for the larger community. To reduce the number and impact of these losses, we must first understand how and why children are dying. The CDR program was implemented in Michigan in 1995 to conduct in-depth reviews of child deaths and identify ways to prevent them. CDR is a collaborative process that brings together local professionals from a variety of disciplines who volunteer their time to share and discuss comprehensive information on the circumstances surrounding the deaths of children.

Local CDR teams use what they learn during the review process to develop findings and recommendations, which they share with other local entities who can help translate them into prevention initiatives that address needs specific to their communities. The goals of CDR are to influence policy and practice changes that: improve death scene investigations; improve the delivery of services to families; and prevent future fatalities. It is important to note that CDR is not about assigning blame, determining cause or manner of death, or prosecuting cases, as the teams have no official authority in any of these areas.

To learn more about the CDR program please visit the Michigan Fatality Review & Prevention website.

Michigan's Child Fatality Case Registries

Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID) Case Registry

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Reproductive Health supports SUID monitoring programs in 32 states and jurisdictions, covering about 2 in 5 SUID cases in the United States. The SUID Case Registry builds on local child death review programs and uses the National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention’s Case Reporting System to compile information about the circumstances associated with SUID cases as well as information about investigations into these deaths. Participating states and jurisdictions use data about SUID trends and circumstances to develop strategies to prevent future fatalities and address persistent disparities in these deaths.

The SUID Case Registry first began in Michigan in 2010. Since that time, data has been gathered on all sleep-related infant deaths in each of the 83 counties in the state. In Michigan, sleep-related infant deaths are defined as deaths to infants less than 1 year of age that occur suddenly and unexpectedly due to:

Suffocation/Positional Asphyxia;
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS);
Undetermined/Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID); and
Other causes when the sleep environment was likely to have contributed to the death.

Sudden Death in the Young (SDY) Case Registry

The SDY Case Registry, which first began in Michigan in 2019, is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The SDY Case Registry gathers information from a variety of sources to learn more about young people through the age of 18 who die suddenly and unexpectedly. The goals of the SDY Case Registry are to increase the understanding of the prevalence, causes, and risk factors for infants, children, and adolescents who die suddenly and unexpectedly and to inform strategies to prevent future deaths.

The following Michigan counties currently participate in the SDY Case Registry:

Allegan
Berrien
Barry
Calhoun
Cass
Grand Traverse

Kalamazoo
Leelanau
Mason
Muskegon
St. Joseph
Van Buren

Michigan’s Fatal Drowning Case Registry

Michigan’s Fatal Drowning Case Registry is a collaborative effort between the National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Network of Public Health Institutes that builds on the efforts of local CDR teams. Michigan was selected to pilot this initiative along with five other jurisdictions in 2021. Since 2022, information about the circumstances associated with fatal drownings in Michigan among children ages 0 through 17 years old has been gathered. The goals of the project are to 1) develop and pilot a nationally standardized drowning investigation tool, 2) enhance data collection in child drowning deaths using existing child fatality review programs, and 3) assess the feasibility of a national drowning case registry. The Fatal Drowning Case Registry aims to better understand the context and causes of fatal drownings, and to thereby address both the burden and observed disparities in drowning deaths for children across the country. By investigating these deaths in a more thorough manner, we hope to learn how to better prevent future drowning fatalities.

Death Scene Investigation (DSI) Training

Child DSI

For over 20 years, MPHI has offered a Child DSI training, which was developed to address identified gaps in child death scene investigation. This one-day training is intended for law enforcement, emergency medical services, children’s protective services, medical examiner investigators, and prosecuting attorneys. The training focuses on death scene investigations, with special emphasis on Sudden Unexpected Infant Deaths (SUIDs), and provides participants with the tools needed to effectively carry out Child DSIs within a county or jurisdiction. Speakers include representatives from the medical examiner’s office, law enforcement, and the prosecuting attorney’s office. The training includes addressing scene evaluation, evidence collection, and doll re-enactments, as well as increasing appreciation of the unique roles of each discipline involved, and the use of the prescribed State of Michigan Sudden and Unexplained Child Death Scene Investigation form. In 2023, 142 professionals participated in the training with 93% of attendees reporting presentations met the stated objectives and 95% indicating information was presented fairly and without bias.

Overdose DSI

In 2024, CCFH received funding from the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) to partner with professionals to develop an overdose death scene investigation (DSI) training. The goal of this training is to enhance the effectiveness of investigation procedures and standardize practices for any suspected overdose. CCFH is partnering with public health professionals, medical examiner offices, law enforcement agencies, prosecutor offices, children’s protective services, and emergency medical services to design, develop, and implement overdose DSI trainings. Over the course of 18 months, the training will be piloted, and feedback will be gathered to identify areas for improvement or modification before officially offering overdose DSI tool training for first responders in 2025.

Michigan Mandated Reporter Training

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) Children’s Services Agency (CSA) continues to make improvements to keep children and youth safe in their own communities by establishing a system rooted in family well-being, prevention, and equity. One initiative to facilitate this vision is the Front-End Redesign, led by CSA’s In-Home Services Bureau, referred to as MiFamily, Stronger Together. The Front-End Redesign has several key areas of focus, including an overhaul of current mandated reporter curriculum and training to address implicit bias, reduce disproportionality, and help ensure there is no conflation of poverty and neglect.

MPHI’s Center for Child and Family Health (CCFH) was selected to develop a new or enhanced mandated reporter curriculum and virtually accessible training to ensure mandated reporters are aware of their requirements to report alleged child abuse and neglect while being aware of personal biases and how those may lead to disproportionality. Over the course of three years, CCFH is collaborating with a diverse group of partners to conduct listening sessions and key informant interviews and will be analyzing current mandated reporter training, laws, policies, practices, and relevant Michigan data to develop training that aligns with nationally recognized best practices.

Partnership with Michigan 2-1-1 to Support Parents and Caregivers of Infants

Michigan was chosen as one of 10 sites funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2023 to implement enhanced community-based Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID) prevention activities using SUID and evidence-based recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Over the next five years, CCFH will collaborate with Michigan 2-1-1 to enhance their existing resource database and provide training to call center staff to prepare them to respond to the needs of parents and caregivers of infants. Feedback from the community and existing data sources will be used to ensure the needs of all Michigan communities are met.

Vital Events Registration Application (VERA) and Electronic Death Registration System (EDRS)

The Vital Events Registration Application (VERA) serves as a system for managing vital events, including birth, fetal death, paternity reporting, death, marriage, and divorce reporting. VERA is designed to assist hospitals and midwives in meeting registration deadlines as set by Michigan law for reporting births and fetal deaths; and meets reporting standards as set by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

Michigan’s Electronic Death Registration System (EDRS) provides a secure, web-based environment that supports online collaboration, from creating records to producing certified copies. EDRS allows funeral homes, medical certifiers, medical examiners, and registrar’s offices to complete death certificates online, 24 hours a day.

Vital statistics are compiled from these event registries to support public health, policy, and biomedical research. The Center for Child and Family Health (CCFH) provides education, training, and technical support for vital events, including birth, fetal death, death, marriage, and divorce reporting. Additionally, CCFH creates learning videos, documents and maintains and updates the EDRS and VERA websites.