CPASS - Innovations in Promoting Safe Infant Sleep among High Risk Urban Communities

Felicia Clark, D-ABMDI
Christie Lawrence, DNP, APRN
Darren Harris,
Kyran Quinlan, MD, MPH
Gina Lowell MD, MPH

Innovation in efforts to prevent Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID) is desperately needed since little progress has been made with current efforts over the past 2 decades. In 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), in partnership with IFCK and Amazon, announced a unique funding opportunity for children’s hospitals to partner with family-serving community agencies to promote safe sleep education and distribute safe sleep kits during the prenatal period to communities most impacted by SUID: Community Partnership Approaches to Safe Sleep (CPASS). Our city experiences the largest racial and ethnic disparity in SUID among the largest US cities. Our Hospital/Community Agency Partnership applied for and received CPASS funding for 2022.

Our CPASS site is a partnership of our Injury Free PI, Faculty Champions, Community Educator, and Community Partner Lead. The Community Educator is the former Child Death Scene Investigator for our County Medical Examiner’s Office who conducted hundreds of infant death investigations over the prior decade. The PI, Faculty Champion and Community Educator collaborate to lead the CDC’s SUID Case Registry for the County. SUID mapping targeted prevention efforts. The Faculty Champions are the co-leads of our Hospital Safe Sleep workgroup and are experienced in both hospital-based and community-facing efforts to promote safe sleep. The Community Partner is Center Director and networked with other Centers throughout our city's most impacted communities. The team created a professionally produced 3-minute video that respectfully navigates specific aspects of SUID in at-risk black infants here.

Our CPASS Partnership will distribute 200 safe sleep kits (which include cribettes) to our most impacted neighborhoods through community outreach events. The Community Educator and Community Partner Lead collaborated first at an event involving both outreach and networking opportunities, generating links to 7 other community support agencies providing diverse services for families. The Community Educator also leveraged her knowledge of community support agencies, connected with the 50+ “first wives” of pastors of churches and megachurches in high-risk areas, hair and nail salons, and a local news reporter with a massive social media following. Many outreach activities networked the Community Educator to further opportunities. Outreach activities reach as few as 15 individuals to over 1,000 individuals, depending on the forum. To adequately share information about our work, we developed an informational flyer and a google form, containing a unique scan code to our safe sleep video, for families to sign up for safe sleep kits and families to comment on the video content.

This Community Partnership model and our Community Educator’s unique background and approach allow families to share their understanding and experience with the threat of SUID. Our video has helped to connect with high risk families and promote a deeper understanding and knowledge sharing that may elevate family capacity to practice and advance safe sleep in their homes and communities.

1. Community partnerships with parent support agencies enable access to community experience, trusted avenues for outreach and education, and facilitate networking.
2. Allowing space for community members to reflect, tell their stories, and guide safe sleep conversations generates deeper understanding of environmental and/or knowledge barriers that drive unsafe sleep practice.
3. Understanding local SUID data can serve to guide outreach approaches in communities most affected.