Putting the Public Back in Public Health

Abstract

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.