Baby bed giveaway aims to prevent infant deaths in Ohio SAVING LIVES

By Mary Beth Breckenridge

Akron Beacon Journal (TNS)

Simple cardboard baby beds helped Finland make a dramatic improvement in its infant mortality rate.

Now health professionals hope the cardboard beds will do the same for Ohio. The beds, called Baby Boxes, are available free to all new and expectant parents in the state as part of an educational effort to keep babies healthy.

The Baby Box Co., an online retailer, is supplying the Baby Boxes to a number of Ohio hospitals, health departments and other organizations. Parents who watch a series of short parenting education videos online can claim a Baby Box filled with supplies for newborns at one of those sites or have a box delivered.

The boxes are intended to promote safe sleep arrangements, which can reduce cases of sudden unexpected infant death syndrome, the company said. The boxes encourage parents to keep their babies near them but not in the same bed, where a baby could become trapped and suffocate.

But it’s the educational component of the program that’s key to keeping children healthy, said Jennifer Clary, the Baby Box Co.’s CEO. The educational videos address such topics as breast-feeding, safe sleep and the dangers of secondhand smoke.

A Baby Box is a sustainable bassinet, Clary said. It’s a simple box made from strong cardboard with a firm mattress in the bottom, all manufactured to meet safety and environmental standards.

The box is adequate for use as a bed for the baby’s first few months of life, the company says.

“We don’t need fancy things for our kids,” said Celina Cunanan, director of nurse-midwifery at University Hospitals and a founder of the nonprofit Babies Need Boxes Ohio, one of the organizations involved in the Ohio giveaway. “When I was born, I slept in a drawer.”

In fact, the simplicity of the box is appealing to millennial parents, who like its environmental sustainability and nontoxic materials, Clary said.

The Baby Box concept was inspired by Finland’s tradition of giving cardboard baby beds filled with necessities to new mothers.

To get their boxes, mothers in Finland have to undergo education and prenatal care. “That was the part that really resonated with us,” said Clary, who said parenting education efforts in the United States have sometimes been hampered by understaffing at medical facilities and a lack of interest among parents.

Finland started its program in 1938, when it was a poor country struggling with a high infant mortality rate. Since then, the country’s rate has plummeted from 65 deaths for every 1,000 live births to fewer than 3 deaths per 1,000 now, one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world.

Organizers are hoping the Baby Boxes will produce a similar improvement in Ohio, which ranks 43rd among U.S. states in infant mortality.

Here, 7.2 of every 1,000 babies born died before their first birthdays, according to Ohio Department of Health data for 2015, the most recent year for which figures are available. The numbers are even more chilling for black infants, who died at a rate of 15.1 per thousand live births – nearly three times the rate of white babies.

Besides providing safe places for infants to sleep, Cunanan said the Baby Boxes also serve as an incentive to draw parents to medical and health facilities, where they can engage with health providers and receive encouragement to seek prenatal care.

The company has committed to supplying 140,000 Baby Boxes in Ohio, but Clary said she expects the program to continue indefinitely. She said funding comes from foundations, private donors and the Baby Box Co. itself, which is investing in the program in the hope that parents who receive the boxes will return to the company’s website to purchase supplies.

None of the distribution sites is in the Akron area, but more sites are being added. Parents who can’t travel to a distribution site can have a Baby Box delivered.

New parents often have a lot of needs, Cunanan said, and a Baby Box can help them start out in a safe way.

“It gives them hope,” she said. “It gives them confidence.”