Loss of a child is a terrible sorrow, but families and health-care workers will speak frankly June 29 and 30 about how child deaths can be prevented and how grieving parents can find comfort.

"Passages 2001", a two-day conference for families and medical professionals, was organized by Joanne Cacciatore, founder of the MISS Foundation, which is sponsoring the conference.

In 199, Cacciatore and her husband, Paul Baca, lost a child to stillbirth. For reasons still unknown, their daughter Cheyenne died just minutes before she was born.

Exploring the causes of stillbirth will be one of the topics discussed at sessions held at the Orangewood Golf Resort in Scottsdale.

Other workshops include loss and bereavement, sudden infant death syndrome, building memorial Web sites, the deaths of older children, helping children who lost siblings and understanding miscarriage.

One session will be hosted by Judy Guggenheim, author of Hello From Heaven, a book that chronicles research into after-death communication. Sister Teresa McIntier will try to answer the question, "Why me, God?"

Not only families will attend, but also nurses, doctors, firefighters, paramedics and police officers.

"I expect a lot of healing and a greater depth of understanding for health care workers who deal with these families," Cacciatore said. A child's death, she said, sends ripples across society. "Death is a part of life. We had better start facing it."

On June 11, Cacciatore saw her longtime efforts pay off when Gov. Jane Hull signed a bill into lay allowing special birth certificates to be issued for stillborn children. Arizona is the first state to pass such legislation.

Acknowledging the existence of a baby, despite death at birth, brings a measure of solace to parents, especially mothers who feel failure and guilt in delivering a stillborn child, Cacciatore said.

She believes research is needed to explain the rise in stillbirths nationwide over the past decade, from 5.5 per 1,000 births in 1989 to 7.5 per 1,000 in 1999. More data are needed to trace patterns and discover who is at the greatest risk, she said.

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