Without the right people, an accurate assessment cannot be made. While participation of key professionals has been good and improving, there are still some challenges. As was the case in 1998, one county specifically noted that their medical examiner was unable to attend the local team meetings. The designee of the medical examiner who attends the meetings is typically not actively involved in the autopsy process and cannot answer important questions raised by the team. Creative approaches may be needed to ensure participation of the people critical to making a full and accurate assessment of the circumstances of each child's death and preventability .
Participation takes time as well as expertise.
While each team has a coordinator, much of the work is done by volunteers who are frequently overburdened by the volume of work in their own jobs-investigating child fatalities, providing health care, delivering social services, prosecuting cases, and such. They carve out time to do the important work of child fatality review, but consistent participation is a real challenge for them. Adequate and sustainable funds are required to maintain the State and local child fatality review processes, the collection and analysis of valid data, communication of information gathered from the review process, and utilization of information to prevent child fatalities throughout Arizona. Last year, the teams reviewed 897 cases. Each case takes hours of work.