It’s Safe Sleep Awareness Month
October is Safe Sleep Awareness Month, a month that is designated to promote healthy sleeping habits for newborns and raise awareness about sleep-related risks to infants.
“At Swope Health, we provide safe sleep education with every parent enrolled in the Healthy Start program, every day – not just in October,” said Ahkeya Howard, Lead Community Health Worker for the Kansas City Healthy Start Initiative.
Every year, approximately 3,600 infants die from sleep-related infant deaths including Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The American Academy of Pediatrics has developed a series of recommendations to reduce the risk of sleep-related infant deaths. These recommendations are at the heart of the education that the Healthy Start program provides to parents.
Take a look at this short 20-second video – you’ll see Community Health Worker Ebony Peterson highlight the basics: the baby should always be alone on a firm mattress, on his or her back with nothing else in the crib.
The Kansas City Healthy Start program, which is administered by Nurture KC, provides a free “pack ‘n play’’ portable travel crib to any mother in the program who needs one.
Show us your safely sleeping baby!
This month, as part of the promotion about safe sleep habits, the Healthy Start program is partnering with Truman Medical Centers in a Safe Sleep Image Contest. Any of the participants in Healthy Start can send in photos of their infants sleeping safely to the Swope Health program. All the images that show a safe sleep environment for an infant (up to 12 months old) will be entered into a drawing.
Winning entries (drawn at random) will receive one of three $25 gift cards to Wal-Mart. All entries that show a safe sleep environment will get a Safe Sleep Sack – like a mini sleeping bag for an infant, used especially in cooler weather to help keep the baby warm. The Safe Sleep Sack lets you avoid using blankets in the crib.
You can check out the Swope Health Facebook site and Twitter feed (@SwopeHealth) for images from our participants.
For more information on Safe Sleep, see these resources:
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