Rutgers Experts Available to Discuss SIDS Awareness Month
Rutgers scholars are available to discuss October as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Awareness Month. SIDS is the leading cause of death in the United States of children under age one.
The number of deaths nationwide has declined — from 4,891 in 1992 to 1,500 in 2016 — thanks to public education about safe infant sleep guidelines.
The SIDS Center of New Jersey, a program of the Department of Health, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the Joseph M. Sanzari Children’s Hospital at Hackensack University Medical Center, promotes safe infant sleep practices. Those efforts have helped keep New Jersey’s rate of Sudden Unexpected Infant Deaths, which includes SIDS and other sleep-related infant deaths, among the lowest in the nation.
“Knowledge is empowering, and we urge families to download our new and free mobile SIDS Info phone app to learn more about safe infant sleep,” says Barbara M. Ostfeld, program director of the SIDS Center of New Jersey and a professor in the department of pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
“During SIDS Awareness Month, caregivers should review how well they are educating families about safe infant sleep and other risk reducing practices. Doing it well does not mean that it can't be done even better,” says Thomas Hegyi, medical director of the SIDS Center and a professor and vice chair of pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
More information is available about Ostfeld’s and Hegyi’s SIDS research at Premature Infants at Greater Risk of SIDS.
Ostfeld or Hegyi are available to comment. Contact Barbara Ostfeld at [email protected] or reach them through Robert Wood Johnson Medical School department of Communications & Public Affairs: 732-235-5810.
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