Highlights from the 2024 Injury Free Coalition for Kids Conference

Children’s Health Alliance of Wisconsin’s (the Alliance) injury prevention and death review initiative had the opportunity to attend and present at the 2024 Injury Free Coalition for Kids Conference in Fort Lauderdale, FL this past December. The conference theme was, Forging New Frontiers: Engineering for Equity, and presentations around child safety and injury prevention were focused on viewing efforts through an equity lens.

The Alliance staff presented on the safe sleep projects we coordinated in 2024, designed to capture and elevate family voice around infant safe sleep practices, increase understanding of family needs and adjust prevention efforts.

Sleep Baby Safe Project
Ten local health departments were invited to participate in this project. Participants attended local community events, conversed with families about their current and/or planned infant sleep habits, visually demonstrated what a safe sleep environment looks like and utilized this project to enhance their current prevention efforts. This project made it possible for health department staff to provide education around safe sleep and communication with families directly. Families were also asked to complete a survey as a method to capture firsthand information.

Reducing Sudden Unexpected Infant Death using a collaborative approach
The Alliance partnered with the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to survey public health departments, Women, Infants and Children clinics and hospitals, to understand how infant safe sleep and abusive head trauma (AHT) information was being shared with families. In 2023-24, the survey was piloted to agencies in Wisconsin’s most populous county – Milwaukee County. The survey results revealed inconsistencies about how the agencies interpreted information delivery methods. This survey highlighted the need to offer more training to agencies about infant safe sleep and AHT that should include how to have trusting, nonjudgmental conversations to raise awareness and share information.

Reducing sleep-related infant mortality impacting African American communities in Southeast Wisconsin
African American families in Wisconsin experience Sudden Unexpected Infant Death at a rate nearly four times greater than other families. This project focused on including family voices from impacted communities to help address the issue and to learn what barriers exist for families. The survey was offered to African American caregivers between the ages of 18 to 30 who were pregnant or caring for an infant under 1 year of age. Families who choose not to follow safe sleep recommendations often include one or more social determinants of health, like unstable or crowded housing, transportation and lack of support – the Alliance’s goal was to learn from families what community and professional support would look like to help address these issues.

Taking part in these projects improved collaboration and engagement between local health departments and the community. More than 500 families received education and information on the utilization of the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for infant safe sleep and shared their thoughts firsthand. The Alliance was excited to be able to share these inexpensive, yet innovative projects with injury prevention partners from around the country!

Learn more about the injury prevention and death review initiative
To learn more about what our team is doing in the community, click here!