wuwm.comMilwaukee co-sleeping campaign (knife in bed)
Also: Your baby sleeping next to you can be just as dangerous
“Your baby sleeping next to you can be just as dangerous.”
November 2011 posters and PSAs showing a baby in an adult bed beside a large butcher knife (one version with a white baby, one with a Black baby), with a phone number for a free portable crib. Health Commissioner Bevan Baker defended the shock approach given the city's infant death rate; critics said it shamed bed-sharing parents and ignored wider causes.
- Years
- 2011–now
- Country
- United States
- Topic
- Infant sleep
- Asks people to
- Stop
- Strategy
- Fear appeal
- Channel
- OutdoorTV
- Audience
- ParentsMilwaukee parents, especially Black families
Evidence
NoneUnknown
No published evaluation found. A 2013 local report said deaths from unsafe sleep stayed constant (WUWM). Peacock et al. found three quarters of 13 US city safe sleep campaigns used fear appeals, 60% of those with guilt or blame, and none had published evaluations.
Sponsor (who paid)
- City of Milwaukee Health Department State local government
Credits (who made it)
Not recorded yet.
Related campaigns
- Back to Sleep 1994–now
Sources
- Milwaukee hopes babies and butcher knives wake parents up to dangers of co-sleeping (ABC News, Nov 2011) news · 2011
- Milwaukee co-sleeping ad stirs nationwide debate (Wisconsin Health News) news · 2011
- Co-sleeping deaths persist in Milwaukee (WUWM, 2013) news · 2013
- Peacock NR et al. Qualitative analysis of infant safe sleep public campaign messaging. Health Promot Pract 2017 reference · 2017 · DOI 10.1177/1524839917690339 · PMID 29161896
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. Good test case for the boomerang/blame question. Agency credit not found. URL seen in WebSearch results;
Record cases/milwaukee-co-sleeping-campaign.json, updated 2026-10-23· Link to this campaign