Lawmakers are considering a bill that West Virginians who work to prevent domestic violence say could have devastating repercussions for the state.
HB 4874 was up for amendments in the House today and delegates will likely vote on final passage tomorrow. After that, it would go to the Senate.
The bill would eliminate government-run panels that investigate deaths from prescription drug overdoses and deaths related to domestic violence.
“It’s very work-heavy and onerous,” said state health officer Matthew Christiansen. “And we don’t necessarily get actionable public health recommendations immediately out of them.”
Annual reports published by the domestic violence team examine each death, determine how the person died and recommend how to prevent more in the future. In the most recent report, the team identified 121 deaths related to domestic violence. But state law prohibits the “proceedings, records and opinions” of the review team, severely limiting what the public can know about these deaths.
Joyce Yedlosky, team coordinator for the West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said her organization relies heavily on the reports.
“It has revealed many recommendations but also many practices that we all need to be aware of if we’re working toward ending violence in families,” she said.
For example, Yedlosky said there are many West Virginia deaths related to domestic violence that aren’t classified that way by coroners or medical examiners. When the review team examines more cases with additional information, they often find dozens of additional deaths related to domestic violence that would have been missed otherwise.
Christiansen said the state’s Bureau for Public Health would continue to keep a count of domestic violence deaths.
But Yedlosky said determining whether a case really is related to domestic violence takes a lot of time, information and conversations between experts, something she isn’t convinced the bureau will do.
“I think we will lose our understanding of how many deaths are related to domestic violence,” she said. “And in that way, we’ll get a false sense that our death rate is lower.”
