For the Tomahawk Leader
LINCOLN COUNTY – A Lincoln County committee this week said an “alarming” number of accidental deaths among senior citizens in Lincoln Country are attributed to falls.
The Lincoln County Death Review Committee met at the Lincoln County Service Center in Merrill on Monday, Jan. 8 to “conduct death study reviews, identify contributing factors to death and develop recommendations to be shared amongst partners to prevent future deaths,” according to a release from the Lincoln County Coroner’s Office.
The release said the committee, made up of area health and school officials, local law enforcement and members of the Lincoln County Social Services and Health Departments, reviewed six deaths from 2023 during the roughly two and a half-hour meeting.
The committee also discussed death trends in Lincoln County, during which time Lincoln County Coroner Valerie Caylor highlighted the “alarming number of deaths attributed to falls, mostly among the elderly.”
The release cited a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistic stating that in 2021, Wisconsin led the nation with the highest number of deaths related to falls with 1,635.
According to the release, the Coroner’s Office investigated 45 accidental deaths in 2023, 17 of which were related to falls.
During the meeting, the committee “made recommendations to specific agencies on how to prevent future deaths.”
Going forward, the committee will meet quarterly, as it had prior to 2016, and will focus on education and prevention.
Adhering to the previous meeting schedule will allow for a “timelier review of deaths in order to be more proactive with prevention,” the release said.