Putting the Public Back in Public Health An Argument for the Articulation of Fatality Reviews and Coroners’ Inquests

Fatality reviews are part of the public health arsenal to mortality prevention. As such they rely on medico-legal practitioners’ participation. Yet medico-legal practice in the United States is still divided between the scientific approach of medical examiners systems and the political approach of coroners systems. I argue that this is related to the public’s reluctance to let go of its jurisdiction over death as a social fact. I posit that attempts at systematizing coroners’ inquests, as in Washington State, illustrate such resistance, yet could be conceived as a compromise between the political and the scientific, benefiting public health and the goal of fatality reviews.