In North Carolina, they're down only 27 percent in the same period and remain 24 percent higher than the national average. To Chris O'Meara, campaign coordinator for North Carolina's Back to Sleep Campaign, that's 98 too many. Even more worrisome, the state's SIDS rate has not improved significantly since 1997. African-American parents also are more likely to lay their infants on their stomachs to sleep. And those habits, said N.C. Health Director Dennis McBride, are hard to break.
People feel very strongly about child-rearing practices.
So if you're going to try to intercede, you have to do it in a culturally sensitive way. It's just not that easy. In the literature, her daughter explains that a nurse at the hospital said it was safer. She is finally swayed when her daughter tells her that the new way has reduced crib deaths. National studies show that 81 percent of parents now put their babies on their backs or sides to sleep, up from 28 percent in 1992, when the American Academy of Pediatrics reversed its previous advice of putting sleeping babies prone.