Pittsburgh Hosts First Summit for Safe Sleep

The summit brings together professionals from the health departments, service agencies, and childcare groups across the country to find ways to cut down on infant deaths. Judy Bannon, founder of Cribs For Kids, the summit's host, says most infant deaths in Allegheny County are caused by the babies not sleeping on their backs, alone in a crib. She says parents bring their infants into bed with them, or leave them to sleep on a couch, and that's when the infants are the most vulnerable to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS. She says the organization provides low-income families with cribs, but many death investigations found a crib in the house.
Bannon believes education may be more important than having the crib itself. She says a that passed the Pennsylvania House and is now sitting in Senate Committee would require women to watch a video on unsafe sleep before discharge from the hospital. She says the summit will discuss federal laws to codify deaths from unsafe sleep.