KID is excited to release four new masterclass courses as part of the KID Design Safety Toolkit. The new courses are designed for entrepreneurs and businesses that create children’s products and provide information, insights and case studies around designing for safety from leading industry experts. The new courses take a deeper dive into how to create and design products more safely in Sleep, At Home, Play and Out & About categories. Leading experts in each area share their knowledge on various design hazards pertaining to each category such as cribs, furniture, toys, and strollers and how to mitigate those hazards. Users must complete the general course (approximately 3 to 4 hours) to access the four new courses, which were designed in mind for those who specialize in one or more of the major children’s product categories. The Toolkit also provides users with downloadable resources. Learn more and register for the KID Design Safety Toolkit here.

Building a Bridge to Safety is the cornerstone of all the work we do here at KID. Whether it’s advocating for better safety standards, championing legislation designed to keep our most vulnerable children safe or connecting families who have experienced insurmountable loss with vital resources, our efforts are built on this foundation. This year, we are proud to honor Trista Hamsmith for her tenacious advocacy to prevent button and coin cell battery ingestion. Join us on Thursday, April 25, in Chicago as we honor Trista at our Best Friend Award Night. Emceed by award-winning journalist Lisa Parker, the event will feature appetizers, drinks, raffle, auctions, wine toss, and more. Purchase tickets and sponsorship now at our event page.

Last month, KID traveled to Orlando for the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization’s (ICPHSO) Annual Meeting and Training Symposium. The event brings together many different product safety stakeholders to discuss current product safety issues and how we can improve safety. Nancy spoke on a panel titled Protecting Consumers in an Expanding Secondhand Market with Meta, IKEA, and the CPSC. The panelists discussed ideas to get recalled and unsafe products off online sites. Dev led a roundtable discussion at ICPHSO’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) session, talking about how companies and CPSC can better incorporate DEI and accessibility into their recalls and other forms of communication with consumers. Read more at our blog.

A new AAP study on SUID cases analyzed data on 7,595 SUID cases from 2011-2020 and found that three in five infants were sharing a bed, couch, or chair when they died and at least 76% of all SUID cases had multiple unsafe sleep factors present. The study found 82% of infants surface sharing and 68% of those who were not surface sharing had at least two additional unsafe sleep factors. Follow the ABCs of safe sleep every time an infant is laid to sleep: baby is Alone and has their own separate sleep space and is placed to sleep on their Back in a Crib, play yard or bassinet that meets the federal safety standard.

New federal standards for child car seats took effect, according to a Consumer Reports (CR) article. The long-awaited upgrades by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will make car seats easier to use for caregivers and provide greater protection to children. NHTSA’s changes are the first time that side-impact protection will be evaluated on an equal playing field and will set a minimum level of performance nationwide in standardized side-impact tests. CR reports that many of NHTSA’s changes won’t be evident to the consumer, but they are a vital step forward to assure parents and caregivers that their child seats must be tested to provide a minimum standard of safety.