Obama proposes legislation to better track SIDS, stillbirths

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday proposed legislation aimed at improving the way America investigates and accounts for sudden infant deaths as well as stillbirths.The bill sponsored by the Illinois Democrat would direct federal public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to set up national registries of sudden unexpected infant deaths and stillbirths to better understand the causes and trends related to the deaths.Each year, some 4,500 babies die suddenly and unexpectedly in the first year of life, and an estimated 25,000 U.S. women in the United States suffer stillbirths."Every year, too many American families experience the heartbreak of stillbirth and sudden unexpected infant death and we must do everything we can to work to prevent these tragedies,'' Obama said in a statement introducing the bill.In addition to aiding research into the causes of the deaths, the bill "will also provide every American family with access to information about ways to prevent them,'' added Obama, who is the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate.The legislation addresses many of the issues raised last year by a nine-month Scripps Howard News Service review that exposed the chaotic and wildly varying methods used to investigate infant deaths across the country.The review, which included an analysis of more than 20,000 infant death records maintained by the CDC, found that some states routinely label all unexpected infant deaths as the result of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, while others classify most similar deaths as the result of "unknown causes."Yet a growing minority of states and localities that follow standard protocols for infant death probes and have active, well-established programs for reviewing the deaths of babies are finding that a majority of sudden infant deaths in their jurisdictions are due to accidental suffocation, most often from a baby sleeping with another person or in some place other than a crib.Obama's bill calls for:-- Setting up a "surveillance and monitoring system based on thorough and complete death scene investigation data, clinical history and autopsy findings;-- "Collecting standardized information about the environmental, medical, social and genetic circumstances that may correlate with infant deaths to supplement vital statistics reports;-- "Establishing a standardized classification system for defining subcategories of SIDS and SUID (Sudden Unexplained Infant Death) for surveillance and prevention research activities;-- "Supporting multidisciplinary infant death reviews such as those performed by child death review committees and fetal infant mortality committees to collect and review the standardized information, and accurately and consistently classify and characterize SUID."The bill also addresses related problems with a lack of standardized criteria for the reporting and classification of stillbirths by calling for a standard definition to be developed by national health organizations and professional societies. It would also set up a national case registry to collect data under that standard.The CDC has already set up a pilot stillbirth registry program in Iowa and the Atlanta metropolitan area.Obama's proposal has been endorsed by a number of groups involved in advocacy and prevention of stillbirth and sudden infant death, including the American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on SIDS, the American SIDS Alliance, the International Stillbirth Alliance, Cribs for Kids, and First Candle/SIDS Alliance."First Candle applauds Sen. Obama for introducing this groundbreaking bill,'' said the infant survival group's president, Marian Sokol. "Without consistency in defining, investigating and reporting these tragic deaths, families are left searching for answers and there is no hope for a future where these deaths can be prevented."Judith O'Bannon, president of Cribs for Kids, said: "We endorse any efforts to improve infant death reviews and look forward to joining Sen. Obama in his efforts to save babies' lives."(E-mail Lee Bowman at bowmanl(at)shns.com and Thomas Hargrove at hargrovet(at)shns.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.net)