According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Preparedness Capabilities: National Standards for State and Local Planning, “Fatality Management” is defined as, “the ability to coordinate with other organizations (e.g., law enforcement, healthcare, emergency management, and medical examiner/coroner) to ensure the proper recovery, handling, identification, transportation, tracking, storage, and disposal of human remains and personal effects; certify cause of death; and facilitate access to mental/behavioral health services to the family members, responders, and survivors of an incident.” This broad scope of activities requires coordinated plans and response from healthcare, public health, and emergency management as well as medical examiners/coroners, funeral/ cremation services, and many other governmental and non-governmental entities.
Mass fatality incidents are defined as those in which there are more bodies than can be handled using local resources. Since communities vary in size and resources, there is no minimum number of deaths for an event to be considered a mass fatality incident. When planning for and responding to mass fatality events, it is the responsibility of healthcare and fatality management professionals to ensure the respectful and orderly management of deceased persons. For information on Family Assistance Centers, access the Family Reunification and Support Topic Collection.
Managing decedents during the COVID-19 pandemic posed unique and significant challenges. Select related resources are included in this collection; access the ASPR TRACIE COVID-19 Fatality Management Resources Collection for more comprehensive resources. The Ebola/VHF Topic Collection contains links to resources specific to the management of VHF-infected human remains.
This ASPR TRACIE Topic Collection was refreshed in October 2022. Each resource in this Topic Collection is placed into one or more of the following categories (click on the category name to be taken directly to that set of resources). Resources marked with an asterisk (*) appear in more than one category.