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Plans for the establishment of a Preventable Deaths Tracker in Northern Ireland were heard at Stormont earlier this week. Dr Georgia Richards of King’s College London and Sarah Jane Campbell of The Well Suicide Prevention gave evidence to the All-Party Group (APG) on Suicide Prevention on Monday 9 November explaining that a tracker would ensure lessons from suicides and other premature deaths are collected, analysed and acted on.
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Dr Richards is an epidemiologist at King’s College London and the founder of the Preventable Deaths Tracker. Campbell is Founder and Service Manager of The Well Suicide Prevention.
The call comes amid continuing concern about suicide in Northern Ireland, which recorded an age-standardised suicide mortality rate of 17.4 deaths per 100,000 population in 2024. The rate was 12.7 in Scotland and 11.4 in England and Wales.
Despite those figures, Northern Ireland has no comprehensive national system for collating findings from coronial death investigations, identifying recurring risks, or tracking whether recommendations to prevent future deaths are put into practice.
There were 18,050 deaths in Northern Ireland in 2024, and 5,393 of them, about one-third, were reported to coroners. Only 67 inquests took place that year. Coronial investigations can uncover important evidence about the circumstances surrounding a death, and coroners can write to an authority to raise concerns. However, this information is not systematically published, collected or analysed in Northern Ireland.
Researchers have already shown the value of coronial data here. They previously analysed 1,667 suicides and identified patterns in service use and in the circumstances preceding death. Much of the information produced by death investigations remains inaccessible, which limits opportunities for learning at a national level.
Dr Richards established the Preventable Deaths Tracker in 2020. It collects and analyses information from coroners in England and Wales and sheriffs in Scotland. Its research has contributed to more than 25 peer-reviewed academic publications, policy reports and evidence used in parliamentary debates. Extending the work to Northern Ireland could provide a UK-wide resource to identify recurring risks, improve transparency and monitor whether effective action follows preventable deaths.
Dr Richards said: “Every coroner’s investigation is an opportunity to learn that could save another person’s life. Yet across Northern Ireland, important lessons are buried and inaccessible to the organisations or systems that could act on them.”
