Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) Awareness Month: Highlights of NICHD Outreach
NICHD outreach efforts are ongoing to help spread safe sleep messages to different audiences
SIDS is the sudden, unexplained death of an infant younger than one year of age. It is the leading cause of death in children between one month and one year of age. In 2006, more than 2,300 infants died of SIDS in the United States.
The NICHD Spotlights for October—SIDS Awareness Month—highlight the Institute’s activities related to SIDS. The first one focused on Timely Advice on Safe Infant Sleep: Research on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and described the NICHD’s research efforts and findings related to SIDS. The NICHD’s portfolio on SIDS also includes outreach—involving communities in reducing SIDS risk. This Spotlight describes the Institute’s activities related to SIDS education and risk-reduction activities, part of its multifaceted approach to understanding SIDS and eliminating it worldwide.
Early Outreach Efforts
Outreach to Specific Audiences
New Trends in Outreach
For More Information
Early NICHD Outreach Efforts
The NICHD has been conducting and supporting research to understand SIDS for many decades. In 1974, Congress passed the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Act (Public Law 93-270), which not only placed the NICHD at the forefront of SIDS research, but also charged the NICHD with providing information to the public about SIDS and ways to reduce the risk of SIDS.
In 1994, the NICHD, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and other partners established a public health campaign to educate parents, caregivers, and health care providers about ways to reduce the risk of SIDS. At the time, research from the NICHD and other sources revealed that healthy babies should be placed on their backs or sides to sleep to reduce the risk of SIDS. From these research findings, "back to sleep" became the main message and name of the campaign. The message was further refined in 1996, when findings from NICHD-supported and other research led the AAP to revise its recommendation to say that healthy babies should sleep wholly on their backs as the best way to reduce the risk of SIDS.
In 1993, before the Back to Sleep campaign began, the U.S. SIDS rate was 1.17 deaths for each 1,000 live births. By 2000, the U.S. SIDS rate decreased by about 50 percent (PDF - 49 KB) to 0.62 for each 1,000 live births and has continued to decline. Although thousands of infants have not succumbed to SIDS, babies are still dying of SIDS, and rates in certain populations are much higher than the national average.
The NICHD’s goal is ultimately to eliminate SIDS deaths, both in the United States and worldwide. To do so, the Back to Sleep campaign and the NICHD continue reaching out to various communities with safe sleep messages. A complete list of safe sleep messages (PDF - 212 KB) is available through the Back to Sleep Web site.
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Outreach to Specific Audiences
Using studies of health education and of SIDS outreach, campaign leaders discovered that response to safe sleep messages differs among different communities and ethnicities. To reach as many people with safe sleep messages as possible, the campaign has created several outreach efforts tailored to different audiences. For example:
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Back to Sleep began offering materials in Spanish very early in the campaign’s existence and provides a variety of Spanish materials today to help spread safe sleep messages to Spanish-speaking communities.
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In 2000, the NICHD and its Back to Sleep partners worked with national African American organizations to design materials about SIDS for African American families and communities.
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In addition to a suite of materials focused on reaching African Americans, the NICHD also partnered with the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, the Women in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the National Coalition of 100 Black Women to hold outreach summits in different parts of the country. The summits focused on training members of these organizations on ways to spread safe sleep messages in their communities.
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These groups also collaborated on a series of radio Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that ran nationwide on the RadioOne network and printed PSAs that were placed on mass transit venues in the Washington, D.C., area.
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In 2006, the NICHD began the Mississippi SIDS African American Outreach Project to expand and improve coordination and delivery of SIDS risk-reduction information to pregnant and parenting women, their families, and other caregivers of infants younger than one year of age in the state of Mississippi. The project partners include the Mississippi Department of Health, local organizations, churches, and community groups that promote the use of culturally tailored SIDS risk-reduction materials developed by the NICHD for African American communities.
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To date, more than 80 mini-grants have been awarded to community- and faith-based organizations to implement SIDS risk-reduction activities.
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Train-the-trainer sessions are also conducted for those who provide health and support services in all nine health district across Mississippi.
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In 2003-2004, the NICHD began working with representatives from American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities to understand the unique information needs of these communities. As a result, in 2009, the NICHD and its AI/AN partners releasedsafe sleep materials tailored for AI/ANs. Additional items within this set of materials for AI/ANs will be released later in 2010.
For more information, select one of the links below:
As sited by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development.
nichd.nih.gov
