Suicide is a leading cause of mortality in young people globally. A history of prior self-harm, with or without suicidal intent, is associated with increased risks of future suicide attempts or suicides.

This NCMD research paper uses conditional logistic regression to estimate odds ratios for self-harm history and other risk factors, adjusting for ethnicity and socioeconomic deprivation. It estimates associations between each risk factor and suicide death, adjusting for all measured factors.

Consanguinity is associated with an increased risk of autosomal-recessive conditions. Factors such as low awareness of available services, language barriers, cultural considerations, and variation in how services are offered contribute to reduced rates of perinatal diagnosis and can affect access to a unifying diagnosis and appropriate care. The effects of consanguinity and these health-care barriers can be substantial, including increased perinatal and infant mortality and long-term morbidity.

This correspondence paper highlights the findings of the recent NCMD thematic report Understanding consanguinity-related child deaths, situating them in the broader context and underlining the urgent need to ensure that advances in genomic technologies translate into equitable clinical benefit.

In Great Britain, an estimated 4% of road deaths occur among children under 16 years-old. Previous research has often focused on individual-level risk factors, with less attention to the broader social, environmental and system-level determinants shaping child road safety.

This protocol paper explores how the NCMD’s unique data can be used to shine a light on the wider determinants of child road fatalities, and what opportunities exist to prevent deaths of this kind.

The aim of this study was to use the NCMD’s unique dataset to report on any changes, and characteristics of children dying by suicide in England, before, and during the COVID pandemic.

It finds that, in England, suicide rates do not appear to be increasing, and the methods of suicide remain static. The role of deprivation and suicide risk appears to be different between race/ethnicity, while a recorded diagnosis of a self-harm events appears to predict suicide in the subsequent month.