National Sleep Awareness Week 2022

Celebrate Sleep Awareness Week 2022 with NICHQ by advancing advocacy, protection, and promotion of evidence-based safe-sleep practices to ensure that all babies are sleeping safely.

Working together, public health professionals, clinicians, and birth workers can help save the lives of more than 3,500 infants each year who die from sleep-related causes. The first step to preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and other sleep-related deaths is to understand and promote the most up-to-date, evidence-based recommendations for safe infant sleep.

Sleeping Baby

Every new person who learns about safe infant sleep is one more person who can promote safe infant sleep guidelines. This National Sleep Awareness Week, join NICHQ in raising awareness about the importance of creating safe sleep environments. Whether in a hospital setting or at home, promoting safe sleep and breastfeeding practices can reduce these numbers, ultimately improving maternal and infant health outcomes.

BASICS OF SAFE SLEEP

At NICHQ, we are committed to making safe infant sleep and breastfeeding/chestfeeding the national norm. Read the Updated 2016 Recommendations for a Safe Infant Sleeping Environment and see How to Keep Your Sleeping Baby Safe: AAP Policy Explained to learn more about these and other actions.

FEATURED SAFE SLEEP RESOURCES

Video Quiz: How Safe Sleep Savvy Are You?

This short video quiz can be used by health professionals to engage parents and caregivers in important conversations about safe sleep and breastfeeding recommendations. The quiz is also available in Spanish!

Safe Sleep and Breastfeeding Myths and Facts

Pediatricians, family physicians, and other health care providers can use these documents during conversations with families to address myths and facts about safe infant sleep and breastfeeding. Now available in 12 different languages!

Safe Sleep Infographic for Child-care Providers

Partner with child-care providers from various communities using our safe sleep infographic offering six simple tips for keeping babies safe when sleeping. Available to download in 12 different languages!

Safe Infant Sleep Baby Registry Guide

This guide is designed to be shared with mothers and birthing people, and it includes strategies for creating safe sleeping environments, product recommendations, and helpful information about product safety standards.

Watch the Webinar

Related Webinar

Watch this interactive webinar from NICHQ demonstrating strategies for helping families adopt safe sleep practices.

During the webinar, Stacy Scott, Ph.D., MPA, NICHQ Executive Project Director and Equity Lead and Founder of the Global Infant Safe Sleep Center, leads a series of role-playing exercises where she demonstrates tactics to engage families from different backgrounds in meaningful conversations about safe sleep.

Creating Safe Sleeping Environments While Breastfeeding/Chestfeeding

Breastfeeding/chestfeeding brings a variety of health benefits for babies. But tired mothers and birthing people need support to continue breastfeeding/chestfeeding while ensuring infants sleep safely.

Watch this interactive webinar providing strategies for Improving Conversations about Breastfeeding
Read this article about the importance of improving sleep for mothers and birthing people to help ensure safer sleep for babies.

NICHQ Articles on Promoting Safe Sleep

Applying an Equity Lens to Safe Sleep and Breastfeeding Efforts

Black families are twice as likely as white families to have their baby die in the first year of life. These statistics are more than numbers; they represent real families who suffer unimaginable loss—loss that stems from the persistent effects of systemic racism on the health of black families. Here, faculty experts on a national safe sleep and breastfeeding initiative share their recommendations for how health professionals and improvement initiatives can better support the health and well-being of black families.

Historic Trauma is Affecting Tomorrow’s Children

When Indigenous people were dispossessed from their land, they not only lost their homes but were separated from their way of life. And in many cases, children were forcefully taken from their families. How do we synthesize the promotion of breastfeeding and safe sleep practices among within the context of this historical trauma? Collectively our Indigenous healthcare professionals offer three ideas.

How Do We Address Safe Sleep Disparities? Start by Building Trust

Healthy babies shouldn’t die in their sleep. But, despite decades of trying to reduce the number of sudden unexpected infant deaths (SUID) they still persist. And most often, their persistence affects families of color. In this article, Founder of the Global Infant Safe Sleep Center, Stacy Scott, shares ideas on how we can best address this alarming lack of equity and reduce sleep-related deaths across all populations.

One Step Closer to the National Norm of Infant Safe Sleep and Breastfeeding

Consistent, evidence-based advice on safe sleep and breastfeeding, whether in a hospital or at home, could improve maternal and infant health outcomes, save babies’ lives, and address significant racial disparities. Learn how a national initiative is seizing every opportunity to support caregivers and babies by working with hospitals and prenatal care centers, social service agencies, and other community touch points across the country.

Successful Strategies Hospitals Can Use to Support Safe Sleep

Hospitals on a national initiative to improve safe sleep came together to share successes and lessons-learned. Here, find their highest-rated strategies and change ideas, all of which reflect early successes in their work. Hospitals seeking to improve safe sleep education can refer to this list as a place to start and guide for gaining quick wins.

Closing the Gaps in Safe Sleep Education in Underserved Populations

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the leading cause of death for infants and is highly correlated with unsafe sleep practices, which is why the Collaborative Improvement and Innovation Network to Reduce Infant Mortality (Infant Mortality CoIIN) has made safe sleep practices one of its six focus areas.