For each of the leading causes of death, TRICAM evaluated multiple variables related to each cause to determine the team’s initial areas of focus. The variables included the magnitude of the mortality rate for each cause; trends over the past decade; ages and demographics of the children impacted; racial/ethnic disparities for each cause; and opportunities for translation of evidence into clinical practice or the community setting. As a result of this evaluation process, the following causes of death were selected as the initial TRICAM areas of focus. The ages in parentheses adjacent to each cause indicate the age range for which it is a leading cause of death:
Asthma (5 – 24 years)
Child physical abuse and neglect (birth – 4 years)
Congenital heart disease (birth – 24 years)
Motor vehicle collisions (birth – 24 years)
Sepsis (birth – 24 years)
Suicide (10 – 24 years)
12xBlack children 7-19 years are 12 times more likely than White children to die of complications from asthma
72%Of all child abuse and neglect fatalities were younger than 3 years old
#1Heart anomalies are the most common birth defect
24,300Children 0-24 years were killed or incapacitated in motor vehicles crashes in 2017
6,800Pediatric deaths from sepsis annually
14%Increase (from 2015 – 2019) in suicide rate among youth aged 10 to 18 years
Next Steps and ways to get involved
Lurie Children’s and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine faculty content experts