Report: Homicides, accidents were leading causes of avoidable child deaths in Kern last year

Accidents and homicide accounted for more than half of the 46 avoidable child deaths in Kern County in 2018, according to a report released this week.

Motor vehicle accidents were the single leading cause of death in the review, killing 13 children in 2018, including four children who were pedestrians when hit by a vehicle, according to the report by the Kern County Public Health Services Department’s Child Death Review Team.

The report is the annual culmination of an analysis of preventable child deaths by a team of more than three dozen members of local agencies from the Kern County Sheriff’s Office to various health agencies.

Child homicides in 2018 spiked to eight, according to the report, more than double the homicides in each of the three prior years: in 2017, three child homicides were reported; in 2016, two were reported; and in 2015, four were reported. Six of the eight child homicides were age 4 and younger, one was age 10 to 14

and one was age 15 to 17.

The 46 child deaths examined also included four suicides, a drop from six in each of the past three years, and six cases of sudden and unexplained infant death, down from 10 in 2017.

Looking at the data by age, children under a year old most often died by avoidable causes, the report said. However, the 15 deaths in that age group in 2018 was a significant decline from the 24 deaths in that age group in 2017.

Children ages 1 to 4 had the second-highest number of avoidable deaths with 14 in 2018 compared to 9 in 2017. No 5- to 9-year-olds died from preventable causes in 2018. The remaining 17 avoidable child deaths in 2018 were of children ages 10 to 17.

The report will be presented to the Kern County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. The Kern County Public Health Services Department declined to comment on the report until after that presentation.