Project Summary
Sleep-related deaths, such as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), are the leading cause of
death for infants over 28 days and claim 3,500 lives each year in the United States. Evidence-
based guidelines have been provided by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) since the
early 1990's. Despite this, many parents have never been counseled by healthcare
professionals on these risk-reduction strategies and continue to make unsafe choices for their
infant's sleep position, location and environment. As such, there is an urgent need to enhance
dissemination of the AAP Safe Sleep Recommendations to healthcare professionals. Since,
2015, annual conferences have been held in Kansas to certify Safe Sleep Instructors (SSIs).
The goal of the SSI training conferences has been to build a statewide infrastructure of safe
sleep champions to enhance the capacity of healthcare professionals to provide consistent and
complete safe sleep education to caregivers. Historically, SSIs have been nurses, home visitors,
health department staff, and others interested in reducing infant death. The overall purpose of
this dissemination and implementation conference application is to expand the dissemination of
evidence-based information and tools to enhance the capacity of communities to increase
quality of care and access to care in order to reduce infant mortality. This will be accomplished
by training SSIs who will return to their communities as Safe Sleep champions where they will
disseminate tools and best practices from the conference to healthcare professionals. We aim
to improve the current training model by developing standardized, evidence-informed curriculum
materials reflecting a national focus instead of Kansas-specific information; host a series of SSI
training conferences where evidence-based information and tools are provided; expand
conference attendance to states beyond Kanas; and offer bimonthly webinars to support all
certified SSIs. To determine effectiveness, all trainings and outcomes will be evaluated using
the RE-AIM framework. Conference attendees (SSIs in training) will complete a pre- and post-
training knowledge assessment as well as a post-training satisfaction survey. To assess
dissemination of conference materials following the training, certified SSIs will collect pre- and
post-data from all professionals they train and all participants of Safe Sleep Community Baby
Showers or Crib Clinics. For SSIs providing hospital and outpatient certification, documentation
is also collected and evaluated.
