The National Safe Sleep Hospital Certification Program was created by Cribs for Kids. Its goal is to award recognition to hospitals that demonstrate a commitment to community leadership for best practices and education in infant sleep safety. By becoming certified, a hospital is demonstrating that it is committed to the mission of making babies as safe as possible in their sleep environments and eliminating as many sleep related deaths as possible.
“To successfully reduce sleep related infant deaths in the community, it is critical to provide a consistent infant sleep message,” said Martin Tursky, President/CEO of McLaren Central Michigan. “Our program is focused on keeping the babies in our community safe by reducing the risk of injury and death to infants while sleeping.”
Sudden Unexpected Infant Death, or SUID, is Michigan's leading cause of preventable infant death. Michigan currently ranks 37 among states for overall infant mortality and the state's infant mortality rate, 6.8 deaths per 1,000 live births, remains one of the highest in the nation. In 2015, 159 Michigan babies died, or more than two children every week, due to sudden unexpected infant deaths. According to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Isabella County reported eight infant deaths in 2017.