SPEAKER

 
SPEAKER
 
ur speaker on Monday was Dr. Kelly C. Lear-Kaui, M.D., Coroner/Forensic Pathologist, Arapahoe County Coroners Office. ​..
 
SPEAKER
 
Our speaker on Monday was Dr. Kelly C. Lear-Kaui, M.D., Coroner/Forensic Pathologist, Arapahoe County Coroners Office. Dr. Lear is the current coroner for Arapahoe County. She was appointed to fill out the term of the previous coroner. Since coroner is an elective office, she will be running for a full term in her own right in November. Some highlights of her talk included:
  • In Colorado, the only statutory qualifications for coroner are that you be 18 years of age, a registered voter and have a high school diploma or GED. In the large counties, it has become customary for the past 30 years or more that the coroner be an MD and forensic pathologist. Currently, this applies to only Arapahoe, Denver, El Paso, Larimer and Mesa Counties.
  • A coroner is tasked with determining the manner of death when a person dies other than in hospice or a hospital. The deaths are categorized in five ways:  1. homicide (which only accounts for 5% of deaths), 2. suicide; 3. accident; 4. natural causes; and 5. undetermined. An example of the last would be someone who dies from a drug overdose. You can tell the technical cause, but whether it was accidental or suicide, for instance, may not be know.
  • In most place, coroners do not do autopsies. They hire a forensic pathologist to come in a do those. In Arapahoe, the coroner and one other staff pathologist can do them, saving the county the expense of bringing in an outside expert. Arapahoe does about 450 autopsies per year, divided between the two pathologists.
  • Arapahoe County is dealing some real problem areas. Overdoses of prescription drugs account for more deaths than car crashes. The county is working with Kaiser Permanente to do a program of education and research into the reasons for the dramatic increase in this area. Suicide prevention is another area of emphasis. The national average for suicides in about 11-12 per 100,000 population. In Arapahoe, the rate is about 18 per 100,000. The county is reaching out to schools, churches, and other community centers to help give people the resources needed to cope with the causes of suicide.
Thank you, Dr. Lear.