Infant Mortality
Within England and Wales the highest infant mortality rate is in the West Midlands. The Chief Medical Officer’s Annual Report 2004 highlighted infant mortality as a distinctive health problem in the West Midlands. The West Midlands is undertaking a range of actions to understand and prevent adverse infant and perinatal outcomes and to ensure that targeted actions, likely to make a major impact on infant mortality, are implemented. A number of organisations are working with DHWM to tackle this tough health issue including the NHS, Children’s Centres, Children’s Trusts, the West Midlands Perinatal Institute, the Government Office for the West Midlands and the Regional Health Partnership. Public health actions likely to have an impact on reducing social inequalities in infant mortality include smoking cessation support for pregnant women and parents and promoting breastfeeding.
Child Accidents
Unintentional injury is one of the biggest killers of children and put more children in hospital than any other cause, yet many deaths and injuries are preventable. Injuries are also a cause of health inequalities and there is a strong association between childhood injury and social deprivation, particularly for pedestrian injuries. The child injury death rate in the West Midlands is one of the highest of any English region. In the West Midlands the commonest cause of injury deaths in children aged 1-14 is transport accidents of which the vast majority are deaths on the road as pedestrians cyclists or less frequently car occupants. This topic was featured in CMOs Annual Report 2006.
As a result of regionally led initiatives good progress is being made to prevent child injury. At a strategic level, working in partnership with other government departments provides leadership and co-ordination. The voluntary sector is an important partner and in 2006 a joint conference with the Child Accident Prevention Trust was staged to create opportunities for improved partnership working between public health departments, children’s trusts and other key agencies. Collaborative work continues with CAPT. Regional programmes such as Healthy Schools strengthen risk and safety education in schools including initiatives such as safety and physical activity; road safety; school travel plans and increasing the number of children undertaking cycle training and wearing cycle helmets. Connecting accidents to safeguarding is also important.
The West Midlands also has an A&E Surveillance Centre. One of the main functions of the centre is to make reliable, accurate and relevant information available to various agencies. The centre has carried out a variety of work looking at the use of A&E by children.
Morbidity and mortality due to childhood accidents have been included as key indicators in the UK's Children's Environmental Health Action Plan Indicators project which is being piloted in the West Midlands. This initiative will describe the burden and distribution of hazards/risks and of childhood disease and injury attributable to environmental risks within the region, provide intelligence to inform interventions and monitor their impact particularly in terms of reducing inequalities.
