Franklin County Infant Safe Sleep and SIDS Risk Reduction Initiative

With the goal of reducing infant mortality, Franklin County, Ohio implemented a multi-faceted Safe Sleep/SIDS Reduction Initiative. It targets healthcare professionals, families, childcare providers, and other community members involved in infant care. The initiative activities include: (1) assessing current hospital practice and policies in infant sleep, (2) developing a hospital-based infant safe sleep education component, (3) educating hospital staff, (4) evaluating hospital practice and policies post intervention, (5) developing childcare and provider education component and conducting community trainings, (6) promoting infant safe sleep though outreach and advocacy.

The Franklin County Infant Safe Sleep and SIDS Risk Reduction Task Force oversees all initiative activities. The Task Force is a multidisciplinary team with representatives from all Franklin County birthing hospitals as well as several community agencies.

The initiative is supported through a combination of foundation and government grants.

The initiative’s goal is to reduce infant sleep-related deaths by promoting safe sleep environments and SIDS risk reduction techniques among healthcare professionals, childcare providers, and all individuals responsible for caring for infants.

Pre and post observational hospital audits were conducted in order to assess initiative success. Pre-intervention audits revealed that 50% of infants were placed to sleep on their backs, 23% of cribs had extra blankets, and 13% of cribs had toys. At the six-week follow-up, after provider education had occurred, 80% of infants were placed to sleep on their backs, 12% of cribs had extra blankets and, 3% of cribs had toys. During the last audit, at the six-month follow-up, 91% of infants were placed to sleep on their backs, 4% of cribs had extra blankets and less than 1% of cribs had toys.

In addition, the initiative was successful in conducting three childcare provider trainings, educating about 130 providers on infant safe sleep.