According to a report from the North Carolina Division of Public Health, the overall child mortality rate from 2014 to 2015 moved from 57.9 to 58.3 deaths per 100,000 North Carolina residents aged zero to 17.
Kella Hatcher, executive director of the N.C. Child Fatality Task Force, said since the task force was established in 1991, it has worked with experts and stakeholders to decrease the mortality rates of both children and infants.
The child death rate in the state since 1991 has decreased by 46 percent, according to the N.C. Division of Public Health.
Sarah Verbiest, a clinical associate professor at the UNC Center for Maternal and Infant Health, said over the past couple of years, however, the state child mortality rate has stubbornly resisted improvement.
“We’ve not seen any significant gains or any significant worsening,” she said. “We’re very stagnant in North Carolina.”
Hatcher said state infant mortality rates making up a large portion of overall figures contribute to the stagnation of child mortality rates.
The infant mortality rate made up 66 percent of the overall child death rate in 2015, according to a N.C. Division of Public Health report.
The infant morality rate for 2015 in the state was 7.3 deaths per 1,000 infants under the age of one — up from 7.1 in 2014.