Nada Hassanein | Stateline.org (TNS) When Jessica Whitehawk helped start a women’s health support center over a decade ago, her team worked out of a tiny room in the back of a nonprofit office on the Yakama Nation Reservation in Washington state. Pregnant women traveled to that room from the farthest reaches of the 1.
3 million-acre reservation because they had nowhere else to go for health care or prenatal advice, Whitehawk said. Many tribal communities have a similar lack of resources, which contributes to American Indian and Alaska Native infants being twice as likely as non-Hispanic white babies to die before their first birthday. A recent study suggests another reason for the high infant mortality rate among Native babies: the way that law enforcement authorities investigate possible cases of sudden unexpected infant deaths, known as SUIDs, in tribal communities.
Researchers found that compared with other racial groups, American Indian and Alaska Native SUIDs were most likely to result in police investigations, which were often incomplete, as opposed to the more thorough investigations conducted by medical examiners or coroners’ forensic staff. As a result, experts say, less is known about those cases, and so less can be done to help prevent future infant deaths in tribal communities that might have scant access to prenatal care or whose cultural practices call for sensitivity. Medical examiners are pathologist physicians who are trained to explore all causes of death.
