Selection of Infant Sleep Position in Few Gardens Community

Guntheroth and Spiers found "without exception all studies demonstrated an increased risk for SIDS associated with the prone sleep position" in 1992. Black mothers are more than twice as likely as white to place their infants on their stomachs for sleep ("Progress in Reducing Risky Infant Sleep Positions", 1999). The SIDS rates for blacks and whites in North Carolina and Durham County show a similar racial disparity in table 1 (North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics, 1999). SIDS is the cause of about eighteen per cent of all infant deaths in Durham County (Durham County Department of Public Health, 1999) and over one-third of all postneonatal deaths (Principe, 1997). There has been more than a forty per cent reduction in SIDS since the national Back to Sleep campaign began in 1994, (Gibson, Dembofsky, Rubin, & Greenspan,2000). The ratio for SIDS between black and white infants has increased however, from 2.16 in 1992 to 2.52 in 1995, (Malloy, 1998). Black mothers are generally less likely to follow the Back to Sleep message ("News in Brief', 1998). Poverty, black race, grandmother in the home, and position mothers observe their infants being placed in the hospital after birth are predictors of an infant being put down for sleep prone (Brenner, Simons-Morton, Bhaskar, Mehta, Nitin, Melnick, Revenis, Berendes, Clemens, 1998). The population under investigation has high rates of poverty, unemployment, less than high school education, single female head of household, and black race. Nursing interventions can be planned if it is known whether the community is receiving the Back to Sleep message, practicing it, and what factors are interfering with the decision to place infants supine for sleep.Master of Public Healt