Infant Safe Sleep in Michigan: A Comprehensive Look at Sleep-Related Deaths, 2018

All babies should be born healthy, thrive in supportive communities, and have the opportunity to live a healthy life. In 2012, the State of Michigan released its first Infant Mortality Reduction Plan. This plan was in response to persistently high infant mortality rates and significant disparities in birth outcomes. Reducing sleep-related infant deaths is one of the nine goals in this plan. Together with our partners, we developed an Infant Safe Sleep Strategic Plan to achieve this goal through various outreach and educational objectives. This report seeks to paint a comprehensive picture of the sleep-related infant deaths in Michigan by combining data, research, information regarding local and statewide initiatives, and opportunities for moving forward that are making a difference in local communities across our state.

 

The report describes the trends in infant safe sleep practices and outcomes and how these trends impact practices related to safe sleep behaviors. Our collective accomplishments and activities to date are highlighted in this document, as are descriptions of existing statewide and local campaigns and programs that support healthy babies. In addition, new opportunities and strategies have been identified for moving forward to work within the system infrastructure of our partners to impact policies, protocols and guidelines that support the delivery of the message in a consistent, planned manner at different points of contact with families during the preconception, perinatal period and early childhood phase.