Examining attitudes toward infant safe sleep recommendations among African American mothers and grandmothers

African American infants are twice as likely to die from sleep-related infant deaths than are infants of other races. Despite the perceived simplicity of infant safe sleep recommendations, data indicates that African American mothers are less likely to follow infant safe sleep recommendations. Grandmothers play an important role in influencing a mothers decision to follow infant safe sleep practices. Thus, there is a critical need to identify factors that impact African American mothers and grandmothers decisions to follow established safe sleep practices and incorporate such aspects in infant safe sleep interventions. This dissertation examines attitudes about infant safe sleep interventions among African American mothers and grandmothers who are likely to perform caregiver responsibilities and influence caretaking decisions such as infant sleep to develop recommendations for a culturally tailored infant safe sleep intervention to increase adherence to evidence-based infant safe sleep recommendations.