New Mexico: SBS Prevention Project

University of New Mexico Hospitals has a SBS prevention program...link

It's alway interesting to see the range of languages at different site - here, Navjaho and Vietnamese.

Link to program description...

UNMH is helping new parents identify and prevent shaking injuries and understand how to respond when infants cry. Our program is a duplication of an educational study conduced by Dr. Mark Dias. From 1998 to 2004, Mark Dias, MD, FAAP and colleagues implemented a hospital-based, parent educational program in upstate New York to teach new parents about the dangers of infant shaking.

The goals of the program are (1) to provide educational materials about SBS to the parents of newborn infants, (2) to assess parents' comprehension of the dangers of violent infant shaking, (3) to track penetration of the program through the collection of returned commitment statements (CS), and (4) to evaluate the program's affect on the regional incidence of SBS.

This UNMH SBS prevention program will be administered to all parents of newborn infants prior to discharge from the hospital. Nurses will provide parents with the following materials: 1) a one-page English, Spanish, Vietnamese, or Navajo leaflet about preventing SBS, and 2) to view a 11-minute video called Portrait of Promise: Preventing Shaken Baby Syndrome. The 11-minute video, Portrait of Promise: Preventing Shaken Baby Syndrome featured 3 families whose lives were affected by SBS and a message from Carolyn Levitt, a nationally recognized child abuse specialist, who addressed the effects of violent shaking and the potentials of prevention.

Posters were placed in the maternity wards and both parents were asked to voluntarily sign a commitment statement (CS) confirming their receipt and understanding of the materials. Program compliance will be assessed by the number of signed CSs and comprehension of the materials as assessed by a 7 month follow-up telephone survey.

Data collection began June 2010 and will continue indefinitely. This pilot should replicate the results of the original New York study. We have begun the process of collecting SBS ICD-9 codes within the hospital to determine the baseline incidence of SBS for children born in the hospital. Our eventual goal will be to collect the data statewide.

Masschusetts: 2011 SBS Awareness Quilt, PS Ontario: Baby Caps

Via Worcester's Telegraph and Gazette, news of a SBS awareness quilt in the making.  

Sadly to say, despite MCC's excellent education efforts, there are probably enough families in Massachusetts with history to make a sizable quilt, but let's hope the quilt is getting smaller every year...

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Group seeks families with shaken baby history

A statewide children’s advocacy group is seeking families affected by shaken baby syndrome for their stories, which will be commemorated on a quilt.

Volunteers with Massachusetts Citizens for Children will stitch a quilt to commemorate children who have died or been injured because of shaking. The quilt will be unveiled at the group’s fifth annual Stroll for Shaken Baby Prevention scheduled this fall.

For more information, contact: Bob Logan, chairman of the SBS Quilt Committee, at logans_27@yahoo.com; or the executive director of the MCC, Jetta Bernier, at (617) 742-8555, or by email at jetta@masskids.org.

PS. If you'd like to knit for awareness, Metronews brings word that London (Ontario) is calling on knitters to knit purple new baby caps...

The trauma program at London Health Sciences Centre’s Children’s Hospital is recruiting knitters to help raise awareness about shaken baby syndrome.


Interested knitters are asked to knit or crochet purple baby caps in any pattern or shade of purple, and to not include strings, pom-poms or wool on the baby caps.


The caps will be provided to parents and caregivers in support of the Period of Purple Crying program, which provides information to parents about shaken baby syndrome.


Completed caps can be mailed or dropped off by Oct. 20 to:
Denise Polgar, Trauma Program, Room E1-129, Children’s Hospital, London Health Sciences Centre, 800 Commissioners Rd. E., London, Ont., N6A 5W9

Boise Idaho: Radio Block for SBS Awareness

Hats off to Boise radio stations!

They'll be hosting a radio block to increase awareness of Shaken Baby Syndrome. Link

Kudos to Boise advocates who helped get it organized, and hat tips to others who've done one: 2009 post, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Michigan

Want to hear how it works? Tune in today at 5:30 (Mountain Daylight Time) via Internet radio. Link to list of stations (the article mentions 107.1 KTHI).

Anyone else doing radio blocks out there? Leave a comment...

Treasure Valley Radio Stations form Radio Roadblock against Shaken Baby Syndrome

Disc jockey KJ Mac's been on the radio a long time.

"Longer than you've been alive," he said

But he's usually spinning the discs of the Rolling Stones, Stevie Nicks and Journey. Only once before has Mac passed on rock and roll to play a minute of baby-screaming.

That track's enough to make any DJ swear: "Never again."

But it's for a good cause: to raise awareness for Shaken Baby Syndrome. And so, once again, for only the second time in his career, Mac and more than 20 other local DJs will bump the shrieks and wails of a baby at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.

It's called a radio roadblock. And the last time it happened, phones at 107.1 K-Hits rang for hours.

"What's going on with the babies?" Mac mimicked. "Everywhere I go, every station I am listening to babies are crying."

And that says social worker and roadblock organizer Marcia Brothers is exactly the idea.

"If you're having a road-block," she said, "people will try to escape your message by changing the station."

But with 20 different Treasure Valley stations all playing the same thing, there's no way to escape the message.

"I don't think people realize that it just takes one little shake," Brothers said. One little shake, just one time could leave parents holding a dead kid.

Thankfully, Shaken Baby Syndrome's 100 percent preventable. To get that message out there, stations like K-Hits will break from the vocals of guys like Mick Jagger in favor of 50 seconds of very unhappy baby noise.

"It seems like three hours," Brothers said.

"It'll be interesting to see what kind of reaction we get," Mac said.

After those 50 seconds of wailing, listeners will hear a message: "No matter how much she cries. No matter how tired you are. No matter how frustrated you may become, never ever Shake a baby."