New Initiative: fetal infant mortality review

Fetal Infant Mortality Review (FIMR) is an action-oriented community process that reviews, monitors, and works to improve perinatal and prenatal service systems and community resources for women, infants, and families. FIMR is important to our community because it helps us identify causes and factors of poor birth outcomes and implement and evaluate strategies to address them.

How FIMR Works

The Calhoun County Public Health Department gathers information about infant deaths from public health and medical records. A health educator conducts interviews with parents who have suffered losses, if the parents agree, and then refers families to bereavement support and community resources.

The FIMR Team meets regularly to review cases of infant deaths, discussing social, economic, cultural, health, safety, and system issues that cause or may contribute to the deaths. The FIMR Team includes health, social service, and medical experts from the community. Based on information collected, the Team identifies trends and makes recommendations for policy development and systems change.

FIMR meetings are closed and completely confidential. No identifying information about the parents or service providers is shared with the FIMR Team.