Disproportionate Enforcement of a Hospital's Safe Sleep Policy for Racial and Ethnic Minority Families. Hosp Pediatr 2025 Jun 01;15(6):483-490
Date
05/15/2025Pubmed ID
40368387DOI
10.1542/hpeds.2024-007800Scopus ID
2-s2.0-105008798676 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)Abstract
OBJECTIVE: We aimed to evaluate the enforcement of a staff-initiated children's hospital safe sleep policy for evidence of systemic racism.
PATIENTS AND METHODS: Retrospective medical record review of staff-initiated safe sleep policy enactments was performed. Demographic data of infants aged 12 months or younger with an unsafe sleep event (USE) documented in the electronic health record were compared with logistic regression to infants without USEs. Time to escalation of USEs was analyzed using survival analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to compare median number of warnings and outcomes of escalation for each demographic group.
RESULTS: Of 233 infants with USEs, a disproportionate number were Non-Hispanic Black (NHB) (52%) compared with infants without USEs (23% NHB) (P < .01). When adjusting for confounding variables, NHB infants were 2.42 times more likely to have an USE compared with Non-Hispanic white (NHW) infants (OR, 2.42; 95% CI, 1.63-3.58; P < .01). NHW infants had a significantly longer median time between first and second warnings compared with all other groups (P < .01), and the time to fourth warning for NHW infants was over 6 times that for NHB infants. The only instances of USEs that escalated to hospital security involved NHB infants.
CONCLUSION: Disparities suggestive of systemic racism were identified in the enforcement of a children's hospital safe sleep policy. For hospitals looking to adopt or revise safe sleep policies, the authors suggest careful consideration of potential impacts on already systemically marginalized families. We suggest replacing punitive consequences of policy nonadherence with interventions to facilitate behavior change in the hospital and after discharge.
Author List
Titus L, Yass N, Nelson A, Liegl M, Pan AY, Corey Bauer SAuthors
Sarah Bauer MD Associate Professor in the Pediatrics department at Medical College of WisconsinAnika M. Nelson MD Associate Professor in the Pediatrics department at Medical College of Wisconsin
Amy Y. Pan PhD Associate Professor in the Pediatrics department at Medical College of Wisconsin
Lauren Titus MD Assistant Professor in the Pediatrics department at Medical College of Wisconsin
MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
FemaleHospitals, Pediatric
Humans
Infant
Infant, Newborn
Male
Minority Groups
Organizational Policy
Patient Safety
Retrospective Studies
Sleep
Sudden Infant Death
