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Safe sleep training program to expand beyond Kansas

The program offers standardized training on the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommended infant sleep guidelines through a certification program.

Zak Kuhlmann, D.O, OB-GYN residency program director and clinical associate professor, and Stephanie Kuhlmann, D.O., Department of Pediatrics associate professor and director of the hospital medicine division, who are both Safe Sleep faculty members and co-investigators on the grant, present at the conference in fall 2020.

Over the next three years, more professionals and parents are going to learn how to provide infants with a safe sleeping environment through a KU School of Medicine-Wichita train-the-trainer program that is expanding beyond Kansas.

Since 2015, more than 200 individuals have received standardized training on the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommended infant sleep guidelines through a certification program developed by the KU Wichita Center for Research for Infant Birth & Survival (CRIBS) in partnership with KIDS (Kansas Infant Death and SIDS) Network.

Until now, all of those "safe sleep champions," as CRIBS director Cari Schmidt, Ph.D., calls them, have been in Kansas.

With a three-year $150,000 federal grant from an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, the Safe Sleep Instructor Program is going to expand safe sleep instructor training both within Kansas and to other states where infant mortality rates are causing concern. From 2015 to 2019, sudden infant deaths, both related to sleep as well as unexplained circumstances, accounted for 19% of Kansas' infant mortality rate, according to Kansas Department of Health and Environment statistics.

In other states, it's far worse, said Schmidt. As word has gotten out about the Safe Sleep Instructor Program - through publications and conference presentations - Schmidt has heard from health officials in other states who are interested in receiving similar training. Individuals from Mississippi, which has the nation's highest infant mortality rate, have inquired about this year's training, which is being made possible with the federal grant money.

In the past, the safe sleep training program has been supported by grants from the March of Dimes, the KDHE, the KIDS Network and smaller grants, Schmidt said. Those grants funded training for only Kansas instructors. The new federal funds will help develop standardized curriculum materials for national dissemination, expand training conferences for the next three years and allow enrollment from other states interested in the training, and support continuing education for certified instructors.

With its train-the-trainer concept - where certified instructors go on to teach other professionals as well as families in their communities - the safe sleep program has had a wide-reaching ripple effect, said Schmidt, who also is the director of research and associate research professor in the Department of Pediatrics at KU School of Medicine-Wichita.

"Those (more than 200) safe sleep instructors have trained over 6,000 professionals, including health care professionals, child protective services, child care professionals and just about anyone who might work with a pregnant woman or her family, or an infant. They've also directly trained more than 4,000 families," Schmidt said.

In some communities, safe sleep certified instructors help organize safe sleep community baby showers, which offer information to families about creating healthy environments and showcase resources available.

Kaleena Erwin with the Kansas Department for Children and Families became a certified safe sleep instructor in 2019. As DCF's prevention and protection services training and curriculum specialist, she has coordinated training others at DCF on the guidelines. As a result, those staff members have gone on to inform about 2,000 other professionals, including subcontractors and even first responders, she estimated. The guidelines have become a standard topic in the DCF's crib clinics that also offer information about breastfeeding, smoking cessation and other healthy behaviors to new and expecting mothers as well as other caregivers.

"It just spiders out," Erwin said. "You train a professional and they tell families that they work with or even their own families."

Research has shown that getting the same information from trusted sources is important to make a behavior change, Schmidt said.

"We want parents to get consistent messaging no matter where they go. When you hear the same thing about safe sleep from your prenatal care provider, the hospital where you deliver your child, your child care provider and everyone else, it makes it much easier to know what to do and feel confident in your decision to follow the safe sleep guidelines," she said. "It's a challenge because people did things differently in the past but we're not about shaming anyone. We equate it to seat belts and car seats. Many of us rode around without seat belts and car seats but now we know differently. What we're doing is building on the science that we know and the ways that we know will reduce the risks of these deaths."

To help individuals remember the guidelines, they are often called the ABCs of safe sleep: Infants should sleep alone (A), on their back (B) and in a clutter-free crib (C) with no soft objects or loose blankets.

The first of the training conferences underwritten by the federal grant will happen Sept. 23-24 in Wichita with a second conference anticipated in the spring. Along with the training, participants receive kits that include a portable crib, wearable blanket and even unsafe items to demonstrate the do's and don'ts of creating a safe sleep environment. Participants will also get access to ongoing webinars and other digital resources. Safe sleep instructors must be recertified annually.

For more information about the certification training, contact Maria Torres, ssidirector@kidsks.org.


KU School of Medicine-Wichita