Unexpected infant deaths dipped about 40% from 1990 levels, which was before that campaign launched, according to the CDC. "There were tremendous results after 'Back to Sleep,'" said Alison Jacobson, executive director of First Candle, a Connecticut-based nonprofit focused on safe sleep education. In the mid-1990s, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development launched its "Back to Sleep" campaign, to teach parents to lay infants on their backs to sleep. Accidental suffocations and strangulations aren't necessarily happening more often, some experts say rather, fatality review teams have become better at identifying causes of death.Īnd the trend remains steady despite decades of public information campaigns imploring parents to take steps to keep their babies safe while sleeping.
That national rate for the past decade has hovered between 20 and 25 infant deaths per 100,000 live births, accounting for around a fifth of all unexpected infant deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rates for SIDS have declined since the 1990s, but a different cause of infant death - accidental suffocation or strangulation - has also been a persistent problem. After Samuel Hanke's infant son, Charlie, died from accidental suffocation in his arms 13 years ago, he and his wife, Maura, formed Charlie's Kids, a nonprofit focused on safe sleep practices for infants. It has long been among new parents' greatest fears. Sudden infant death syndrome, a well-known term that describes unexplained but natural infant deaths resulting from an unknown medical abnormality or vulnerability, is the leading cause of unexpected deaths among infants in the U.S.
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