Considerations in Safe to Sleep® messaging: Learning from African-American mothers.
Deborah Stiffler, Sherry Mukasa Matemachani, Lisa Crane
PMID 31742922WHAT IT FOUND
African American mothers said safe sleep advice was hard to follow: bed-sharing was easier, grandmothers pushed back, and fear of judgment made them tell providers they complied.
They wanted repeated, family-inclusive messages from young African American messengers.
Key findings
01Mothers said bed-sharing felt easier than putting a crying infant alone in a crib, and one said after cesarean birth she could not put the infant in the crib.
02Family members, especially grandmothers, pushed bed-sharing or prone sleeping, and mothers said education needed to include grandmothers.
03Mothers said they told providers infants slept alone on their backs in cribs because they feared judgment or child protective services.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Only 15 mothers took part, and they were recruited by convenience from two programs in one Midwestern city, so this cannot represent all African American mothers. Participants had infants over 6 months, when sudden unexpected infant death risk is much lower, so it does not capture mothers with infants under 6 months. The study reports what mothers said, not whether any changed message reduced bed-sharing or infant deaths. Only first-time mothers meeting Nurse-Family Partnership income criteria were included.
Declared interests
No conflicts of interest were declared. The article's publication types indicate NIH extramural research support, but the text does not name a funder.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that a new safe-sleep message will reduce infant deaths. It is a small qualitative study of mothers' views, not a trial of an intervention.