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Reducing the Risks of Cot Death (Australia)

Also: Reducing the Risk · Reduce the Risks (RTR) · Red Nose Safe Sleep program

Health education campaign launched in June 1991 by the National SIDS Council of Australia, funded partly by Red Nose Day, after a national recommendation that healthy babies should not sleep on their stomachs. Messages covered back sleeping, smoke-free environments, avoiding overheating and breastfeeding; a 1997 evidence forum revised them to favour back over side and to keep the face and head uncovered.

Years
1991–now
Country
Australia
Topic
Infant sleep
Asks people to
Substitute
Strategy
Simple instruction
Channel
Clinical settingPrintTV
Audience
Parents
Australian parents of infants

Evidence

Quasi-experimentalPositive

SIDS fell from an average 195.6 per 100,000 births (1980-90) to 96.5 (1991-96) and 51.7 (1997-2002); Poisson models attribute a fall of almost 40% to the campaign with no sign of diagnostic transfer (Tursan d'Espaignet 2007). In Victoria, pamphlet receipt raised recall of all risk factors, but a third of mothers were very worried about cot death. Indigenous mothers in North Queensland knew much less (adjusted OR 5.4).

Sponsor (who paid)

  • National SIDS Council of Australia (later SIDS and Kids, now Red Nose) NGO

Credits (who made it)

Not recorded yet.

Related campaigns

Sources

  1. Tursan d'Espaignet E et al. Trends in SIDS in Australia 1980-2002. Forensic Sci Med Pathol 2007 evaluation · 2007 · DOI 10.1007/s12024-007-9011-y · PMID 19291477
  2. Cooper RM, Lumley J. Mothers' knowledge of the risk factors and anxiety about SIDS. J Paediatr Child Health 1996 evaluation · 1996 · DOI 10.1111/j.1440-1754.1996.tb02560.x · PMID 8844536
  3. Henderson-Smart DJ et al. Reducing the risk of SIDS: a review of the scientific literature. J Paediatr Child Health 1998 reference · 1998 · DOI 10.1046/j.1440-1754.1998.00225.x · PMID 9633965
  4. Douglas TA et al. Maternal awareness of SIDS in North Queensland. J Paediatr Child Health 2001 evaluation · 2001 · DOI 10.1046/j.1440-1754.2001.00670.x · PMID 11885706
  5. Red Nose: Can SUDI be prevented? sponsor
  6. MJA 2000;173(4): SIDS facts and controversies (editorial) reference · 2000

Research notes

Created 2026-10-23 from the sleep campaign literature search (PubMed and web search; OpenAlex was unreachable), see docs/sleep-campaigns-literature.md. Findings are paraphrased from abstracts, not full texts; official URLs come from search results and were not opened. Launch month (June 1991) and Red Nose Day funding come from search snippets of the MJA editorial and an NHMRC impact case study (https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/resources/impact-case-studies/safer-sleeping); not fetched. URL seen in WebSearch results;

Record cases/au-reducing-the-risks-cot-death.json, updated 2026-10-23· Link to this campaign