National Child Mortality Database (NCMD)

Programme overview
The National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) national data collection and analysis system is the first of its kind anywhere in the world. It records comprehensive data, standardised across a whole country (England), on the circumstances of all children who die before their 18th birthday. The purpose of collating information nationally is to ensure that deaths are learned from, that learning is widely shared and that actions are taken, locally and nationally, to reduce the number of children who die.

The aims of the project are to:

• Capture, analyse and disseminate appropriate data and learning from child death reviews
• Drive the quality of child death review at every stage through bench-marking and quality improvement (QI) methodology
• Study and analyse the patterns, causes and associated risk factors of child mortality in England, providing information to target preventative health and social care and to assist in policy decisions

Additional information on all HQIP-commissioned projects is available on the NHS Trusts page, which includes the recommendations repository, infographics compendium, 9-month publication schedule, impact report, and National Clinical Audit and Enquiries Directory. For further information about this project, please contact the project team directly using the contact details listed in the ‘Supplier Info’ section above.

Patient & Public Engagement case study: The National Child Mortality Database’s (NCMD) case study of their commended entry from the 2022 Richard Driscoll Memorial Award (RDMA) can be read in full here.

Accessing data

Data collected on behalf of HQIP by all NCAPOP projects is routinely reported and these reports are available in the ‘Latest resources’ section. The reported data is also placed on the data.gov.uk website.

For regularly updated dynamic reporting of audit data, follow the link in the HQIP Directory in the column called ‘Link to dynamic reporting’.

For details of how to apply for data that is not in the public domain for this project, please use the contact details listed in the ‘Supplier Info’ section above.

Details of the contracts that HQIP awards are available at: www.gov.uk/contracts-finder.