It's time to start planning for Shaken Baby Syndrome Awareness Week 2009 (the third full week of April).

Three suggestions for things you can do:

- ask your federal, state and local representatives to adopt a resolution or proclamation recognizing SBS Awareness Week 2009, acknowledging the reason why we need awareness and prevention efforts, and thanking those hospitals, child care organizations, schools and other groups for their efforts to educate parents and caregivers about their opportunity to help protect children from injury.

As an example, South Carolina adopted this resolution

In 2008, Senator Chris Dodd and Congresswoman Nita Lowey sponsored SBS Awareness Week resolutions in the Senate and House.

- ask those representatives to visit a hospital, child care center or school to thank the educators

- write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper or email the editor of a blog or website that deals with parenting. Ask them to write a story, post a poll or tak other action to bring attention to SBS during SBS Week.

It works...

Just a note - an alert came my way about three new journal articles that discuss SBS, including one by the "Buffalo Girls" (as I fondly refer to the excellent nurse-coordinators of the Upstate NY SBS Prevention Project), and one that discusses educational strategies for SBS education....

Shaken baby syndrome: diagnosis and treatment.
A Reynolds - Radiol Technol 1 Nov 2008 80(2): p. 151.
http://highwire.stanford.edu/cgi/medline/pmid;19005097

Shaken baby syndrome education program: nurses making a difference.
KM Smith and KA deGuehery - MCN Am J Matern Child Nurs 1 Nov 2008 33(6): p. 371.
http://highwire.stanford.edu/cgi/medline/pmid;18997573

Testing educational strategies for Shaken Baby Syndrome.
M Bailey, T Gress, D Bolden, and L Pfitzer - W V Med J 1 Nov 2008 104(6): p. 22.
http://highwire.stanford.edu/cgi/medline/pmid;19006900

The Washington Post reports that the EPA has updated its assessment of the value of a human life.

Someplace else, people might tell you that human life is priceless. In Washington, the federal government has appraised it like a '96 Camaro with bad brakes.

Last week, it was revealed that an Environmental Protection Agency office had lowered its official estimate of life's value, from about $8.04 million to about $7.22 million. That decision has put a spotlight on the concept of the "Value of a Statistical Life," in which the Washington bureaucracy takes on a question usually left to preachers and poets.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission isn't quite as impressed:

An example of this kind of analysis was used by the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission this year:

A proposal to make mattresses less flammable was expected to cost the industry $343 million to implement. But, a spokeswoman said, the move was also expected to save 270 people. The commission calculated that each life was worth $5 million, which meant a benefit of about $1.3 billion.

That was greater than the expense, she said, so the move made sense.

So, let's see what the cost benefit would be if an effective hospital education for new parents was nationwide and reduced the estimated 300 SBS related deaths by 50%: using the lesser CPSC value, the benefit would be $750,000,000.

The estimated cost of implementing education nationwide ($10 per birth): $41,000,000

The net benefit: $7000,000,000 in savings, even before adding in the costs of prosecuting and incarcerating the perpetrators in those cases.

And before adding in the medical, rehabilitation and educational costs associated with a comparable reduction in the 600 to 900 cases a year where children survive with significant trauma that requires significant caregiving and results in physical and cognitive disabilities (especially learning disabilities that require 12 years of special education costs). Plus even greater costs for prosecution.

And before adding the costs of those children with unrecognized cases of inflicted injury - "mild TBI" - and the resulting costs of special education.

So, spend $41 million, save more than $1 billion.

Not a bad return on investment...

Let your congressional representative know that the SBS Prevention Act also makes compelling economic sense

Summer reading, part III - Prevent Child Abuse America makes it easy to support the Education Begins At Home Act.

April 1, 2007

Preventing harm requires two things: knowing what NOT TO do, and knowing what TO do -the "do's" and the "don'ts".

Hospital education about SBS does the first. There is clear evidence that home visiting programs do the second [including this recent RAND report]. This legislation will help expand home visiting programs.

From PCAA's Prevention Advocate

Take Action on the Senate Home Visitation Legislation
Ask Your Senators to Cosponsor S. 667

Please ask your Senators to cosponsor the Education Begins at Home Act (EBAH, S. 667), recently reintroduced in the Senate by Senators Kit Bond (R-MO) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY). EBAH would establish the first dedicated federal funding stream to support parents with newborns and young children through quality, voluntary home visitation. If enacted, EBAH would extend to a broad range of families the opportunity to benefit from home visiting programs like Healthy Families America. Making quality home visitation programs more widely available in all communities is one of Prevent Child Abuse America’s top priorities.
As of March 27th, the following Senators have already joined Senators Bond and Clinton as cosponsors to S. 667: Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), Susan Collins (R-ME), John Kerry (D-MA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Pat Roberts (R-KS) and John Rockefeller (D-WV). If your Senator is on this list, please be sure to thank him/her.

TAKE ACTION NOW

Why Congress Should Pass EBAH:

Home visitation is an effective, evidence-based, and cost-efficient way to bring families and resources together and help families to make choices that will give their children the chance to grow up healthy and ready to learn.
Home visitation delivers parent education and family support directly to parents with young children in their homes providing guidance on how parents can enhance their children’s development from birth through kindergarten entry.
Quality early childhood home visitation programs lead to proven, positive outcomes for children and families, including improved child health and development, improved parenting practices, improved school readiness, and reductions in child abuse and neglect.
Existing home visitation programs like Healthy Families America serve only a small percentage of families in need of prevention and family support services. EBAH dollars would enable programs to reach thousands more families who have very young children -- the same cohort of children that suffers disproportionately from abuse and neglect in this country.
Take Action on EBAH!
Take action by e-mailing your Senators through Prevent Child Abuse America’s Legislative Action Center. Prevent Child Abuse America has created a sample e-mail asking Senators to cosponsor EBAH that we encourage you to personalize. All Senators can (and should) be asked to cosponsor the EBAH. Support from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee is crucial, however, because it has jurisdiction over the legislation and can move EBAH forward.

Democrats
Edward M. Kennedy (MA), Chair
Christopher J. Dodd (CT)
Tom Harkin (IA)
Barbara A. Mikulski (MD)
Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Patty Murray (WA)
Jack Reed (RI)
Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY)
Barack Obama (IL)
Sherrod Brown (OH)

Independent
Bernard Sanders (VT)

Republicans
Michael B. Enzi (WY), Ranking Member
Judd Gregg (NH)
Lamar Alexander (TN)
Richard Burr (NC)
Johnny Isakson (GA)
Lisa Murkowski (AK)
Orrin G. Hatch (UT)
Pat Roberts (KS)
Wayne Allard (CO)
Tom Coburn

Babyzone features an excerpt from The Colic Chronicles, an insight into the world of a mom coping with a colicky baby and post-partum depression.
[Update - Mama Speaks also has a good review...]

It's an important perspective to share with new parents: colic is cited as a key precipitating factor in many shaking cases, and the feelings of failure, isolation and depression that accompany PPD makes caregiving harder for all of the family.

Knowing that others have dealt with the same issue, and learning about their coping techniques, can't help but put things into better perspective.

So many books today focus on soothing the baby but what about the poor soul who is trying to care for that baby! That is where The Colic Chronicles comes in. Tara shares some helpful hints, professional advice, and important mommy self-care tips and delivers all in a fun and easy-to-read style. Included in the appendix is a copy of "The Colic Commandments," a colic countdown calendar, and numerous references for making mom's life easier.

http://www.thecolicchronicles.com/

PS. I do wish that Babyzone included some reminders in its checklist that parents need to talk to other caregivers about colic (and teething, vaccinations, etc.), the feeling of frustration and anger that can result and help them prepare a coping plan.


Disclosure: when the book was in progess, we discussed the links between SBS and colic with the author, Tara Kompare. She is generously making a contribution to the SKIPPER Initiative.

Well, it's been a long time...

Since 2003:

- laws requiring SBS prevention education have been passed in several states;

- the hospital education program in Buffalo was joined by a regional program in the lower Hudson Valley, and they are about to go statewide;

- a statewide education support program is operating in Pennsylvania and one is about to start in North Carolina, with funding from the CDC.

- April 20-26 will be recognized by the US Senate for the fourth time, along with New York and several other states, as SBS Awareness Week 2008.

Let's talk more about those things in future posts...