Thank you to everyone who joined our December topic call!
HRSA Updates
Jordan Tautges, from HRSA attended to provide support and provided the following updates:
- The HRSA funded SUID Prevention Program released a video series on "Provider and Patient Conversations for Safe Sleep." The goal is to help providers talk with families and caregivers about the importance of safe infant sleep and how to address infant sleep challenges in a culturally sensitive, non-judgmental, and informative way.
- The SUID program also a launched a Safe Sleep Champion Network to foster connections between pediatricians, their American Academy of Pediatrics chapters, and state/local CDR and FIMR teams and to improve provider knowledge of safe sleep practices, provide case examples of SUID prevention strategies, and advocate for the use of fatality review data to inform successful interventions. The Safe Sleep Champion Network will run through May 2025.
- The HRSA funded National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention sponsored a new Special Supplement of the journal Pediatrics with 17 articles highlighting unique findings from infant and child fatality reviews, to be a resource for States, communities, medical providers, public health professionals and researchers seeking to prevent injuries and disease. The full supplement is available here (https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/issue/154/Supplement%203) along with a video abstract (https://vimeo.com/1025141230). There are multiple articles related to SUID, including:
- Factors Associated with Sudden Unexpected Postnatal Collapse
- Unexplained Infant Deaths Without Unsafe Sleep Factors: 2011 to 2020
- Improving Consistency in Classifying Child Maltreatment for Sudden Unexpected Infant Deaths
- Collaboration to Reduce Sudden Unexpected Infant Death With Child Fatality Review and Outreach
- Using Sudden Unexpected Infant Death-Case Registry Data to Drive Prevention
State Updates and Discussion
Ohio shared that they have received approval for their survey that will go out to local practitioners to assess use and availability of safe sleep education resources and identify needs for additional development and resources. They are doing outreach with local communities and specifically trying to identify different clinics in counties that have the highest rates of SUID. They will be sending the survey out in the next couple of weeks.
Texas hosted a webinar on quality improvement and creating SMARTIE goals for their statewide SUID partners and had 167 participants across state. They are excited to have received institutional review board designation so that they can share their findings from their pilot project. They are partnering with local staff that service areas that do not have local health offices to bring messaging and toolkit throughout state. Looking forward to continuing to scale up.
California is focusing on data collection and sharing through the two counties they are funding to do FIMR work. They now have access to national database. They have identified black fetal and infant deaths as well as indigenous fetal and infant deaths as a priority and hope to be able to use the data to learn why these populations have high numbers of SUID. This is the first year of implementation; last year was year of planning & building infrastructure for their team. Taking a more strategic approach on how to make sure there is infrastructure capacity and work force development & making sure they understand the process to get good data. Maternal interviews are getting more traction. Also, it is mandated in CA that all birthing hospitals offer safe sleep info to all discharged but they are working to see if there can there be more proactive interactions with their prenatal visits (for example through doulas). Chris shared that the International SID/SUID conference will be held in San Diego, CA October 2025
North Dakota received funding and ordered dolls for crime scene investigation. They also ordered and more pack n plays and bedside sleepers (for tribal populations). They are working to revamp and revise Safe Sleep on state website and include a data dashboard.
Discussion
Ensuring alignment with AAP guidelines for safe sleep including ND sharing a challenge that state childcare licensing allows sleep with a blanket with parent permission and CA sharing messengers wanting to share non-AAP guidance.
Upcoming events and tasks:
- January 15, 2025 - Primary Points of Contact for each team will receive a link for the 'harvesting survey', to be completed by one individual on the team. This survey is CSN's opportunity to learn more about how strategy teams are utilizing the change package and identify potential gaps or improvements needed for each change package.
- Cohort 2 applications available in February - teams continuing can submit a continuation form rather than new application. In addition to continuing current strategy teams, states have the opportunity to add new topics.
- January STAW on Thursday 1/23/25 from 2:00-3:00p EST: 'Data Driven Storytelling in Child Safety' This is a public event, please share with interested colleagues
- CSN/MIECHV-TARC are collaborating on a forthcoming webinar February 6, 2025 2:00-3:00pm EST: Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting & Child Safety: Opportunities for Collaboration
To Do’s:
- Meet with your team to determine if you’ll join next cohort
- Application process shorter process this round
- Identify your point of contact to complete the Harvesting the Change survey (only one person per state will complete the survey)
Ongoing:
- Monthly reporting
- Create and implement PDSAs (Plan, Do, Study, Act)
- Reach out for individualized TA