Omni William Penn, Pittsburgh, PA

April 10 – 13, 2008

Event/Conference Pictures By George Thomas Mendel Photography

Hi Resolution prints available, Click Here


I invite you to join a national dialogue that will address the importance of a safe sleep environment
for infants and the need for accurate and consistent classification and coding of sudden
unexplained infant deaths. This discussion will take place at the Cribs for KidsŪ First Annual
Conference, Breaking the Cycle - A Safe Sleep Summit. This ground breaking conference will be
the first of its kind to bring experts, from both of these arenas, under one roof.


Cribs for KidsŪ was created in 1998 by SIDS of Pennsylvania when SIDS of Pennsylvania and local Child Death Review Team members discovered that 90 percent of the infants diagnosed as SIDS had died in places other than a properly assembled and maintained crib. Thanks to the growth of the Child Death Review System and increased use nationwide of the CDC protocol for infant death scene investigation, there is now wide spread recognition of the risk factors infants face when they are placed in unsafe sleep environments. The mission of Cribs for KidsŪ is to provide infant safe sleep education and give the gift of a crib to families in need. Currently there are Cribs for KidsŪ programs operating in 152 communities in 35 states where safe sleep education materials and cribs have been distributed to over 40,000 families.

 

The Keynote speaker for the Plenary Session on Friday morning will be Carrie Shapiro-Mendoza, PhD, MPH of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She will be joined by Lee Bowman and Thomas Hargrove, Scripps Howard reporters who authored the 9-month series Saving Babies.

http://www.scrippsnews.com/sids

The Plenary Session on Saturday morning will be chaired by John Kattwinkle, MD, Chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Task for on SIDS.  Presenters will include Rachel Moon, MD, and Fern Hauck, MD, members of the the AAP Task Force on SIDS and James Kemp, MD, a nationally known researcher on safe sleep.

Other national presenters include Teri Covington, Executive Director of National Child Death
Review; Deborah Robinson, Infant Death Specialist, Seattle, Washington; Pat Tackitt, Infant Death Specialist, Michigan; Major Connie Shingledecker, Investigative Bureau Chief, Manatee County Sheriff's Department (Bradenton, FL) and Lorraine Boyd, MD, Medical Director of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene who administers New York City's Cribs for KidsŪ
program.


For more information about the conference, including hotel and travel information and the
registration form, see below. We look forward to you joining us at this trail blazing safe-sleep summit.

Sincerely,


Eileen Tyrala, MD, FAAP
Conference Chairperson
Medical Director, Cribs for KidsŪ