National Association of Medical Examiners Position Paper: Recommendations for the Documentation and Certification of Disaster-Related Deaths.

Collecting and reporting accurate disaster mortality data are critical to informing disaster response and recovery efforts. The National Association of Medical Examiners convened an ad hoc committee to provide recommendations for the documentation and certification of disaster-related deaths. This article provides definitions for disasters and direct, indirect, and partially attributable disaster-related deaths; discusses jurisdiction for disaster-related deaths; offers recommendations for medical examiners/coroners (ME/Cs) for indicating the involvement of the disaster on the death certificate; discusses the role of the ME/C and non-ME/C in documenting and certifying disaster-related deaths; identifies existing systems for helping to identify the role of disaster on the death certificate; and describes disaster-related deaths that may require amendments of death certificates.

Psychosocial risk factors as contributors to pregnancy-associated death in Virginia, 1999-2001.

Objective: To determine if substance abuse, mental illness, and domestic violence contributed to preventable pregnancy-associated death and to describe characteristics of women for whom these factors contributed to death.

Methods: The medical records of 121 women who had pregnancy-associated deaths in Virginia between 1999 and 2001 were reviewed. The incidence of substance abuse, mental illness, and domestic violence was noted during systematic review.

Mass murder in a university setting: analysis of the medical examiner's response.

Background: Seung-Hui Cho, a student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), shot and killed 33 students and faculty, including himself, on the morning of April 16, 2007.

Methods: A retrospective review of the medical examiner system response to this multiple fatality event was undertaken to identify which procedures were and were not effective. Case records, spreadsheets, telephone call logs, notes, and after-action interviews of staff were reviewed and analyzed.