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October is Safe Sleep Awareness Month, an initiative that we always highlight in our newsletter and on social media. Safe sleep is also the topic of this month’s Nurture KC News podcast. While safe sleep education is conducted year-round at Nurture KC, highlighting its importance in October is part of a national campaign begun in the 1990s to address escalating deaths from SIDS in the United States. There was a concerted effort to provide guidance on how to place babies for safe sleep. The federal government began its Back to Sleep campaign which became the Safe to Sleep campaign in the early 2000s. We now refer to these deaths as SUIDs or sudden unexpected infant deaths.
As part of that effort, The American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) developed the ABC campaign. Alone. On your back. In a crib. Place infants on their backs for sleep in their own sleep space with no other people.
- Use a crib, bassinet or portable play yard with a firm, flat mattress and a fitted sheet. Avoid sleep on a couch or armchair or in a seating device, like a swing or car seat (except while riding in the car).
- Keep loose blankets, pillows, stuffed toys, bumpers and other soft items out of the sleep space.
- Breastfeed if possible and avoid smoking.
While the message is a simple one, how realistic are these recommendations for families? Often one of the most crucial barriers is lack of access to a crib. Nurture KC provides Pack and Plays to every family in our Healthy Start program along with safe sleep education and demonstration.
Despite the success of the federal Safe to Sleep campaign in reducing SUID deaths and increasing safe sleep awareness, the funding for the program has been discontinued this year. It is incumbent upon community organizations like Nurture KC to continue safe sleep messaging to provide families with the information and resources to avoid a preventable cause of infant death that is far too high in Missouri and Kansas. Listen to our in-depth conversation on infant safe sleep with Shannon Williams and Marisol Hernandez.
Tracy Russell
Chief Executive Officer, Nurture KC
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