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Does Exposure to Pediatrician or Parent Blog Content Influence Infant Safe Sleep Practices?

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Abstract

Objective

To examine whether exposure to safe sleep recommendations using a blog format changed infant sleep practices.

Methods

We conducted a pilot randomized controlled trial via Qualtrics, a web-based platform, with a national sample of parents of children < 1 year old. Survey questions about infant sleep practices included: bed-sharing, location, position and objects present. Safe sleep was defined as not bed-sharing, in a crib, bassinet or playard, back positioning, and no other objects present except pacifiers. Participants were randomized to read one of the following: (1) pediatrician blog post, (2) parent blog post, or (3) no blog post. The blog posts contained the same content about infant sleep but varied by identified authorship. All participants received links to online content about safe sleep. Participants received a follow-up survey 2–4 weeks later with the same questions about infant sleep practices. We compared responses in pre- and post-surveys by type of blog post exposure using multivariable logistic regression models.

Results

The average infant age (n = 1500) was 6.6 months (Standard Deviation 3.3). Most participants (74%) were female; 77% were married; 65% identified as white Non-Hispanic, 12% were black and 17% were Hispanic. 47% (n = 711) completed both surveys. We identified no differences in the odds of any of the four safe sleep practices after exposure to safe sleep recommendations in blog post format.

Conclusion

Although in-person advice has been associated with improved safe sleep practices, we did not identify changes in infant sleep practices after exposure to safe sleep advice using blog posts.

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Data Availability

De-identified data is available on request.

Code Availability

Code using Stata 14 is available on request.

Abbreviations

AAP:

American academy of pediatrics

US:

United States

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Funding

This study was funded by Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington, M/S CURE-4, PO Box 5371, Seattle, WA, 98145, USA

    Mersine A. Bryan, Yolanda N. Evans & Aubrey Gower

  2. Seattle Children’s Research Institute, Seattle, WA, USA

    Mersine A. Bryan & Yolanda N. Evans

  3. Department of Pediatrics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Megan A. Moreno

Authors
  1. Mersine A. Bryan
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  2. Yolanda N. Evans
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  3. Aubrey Gower
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  4. Megan A. Moreno
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Contributions

MAB conceptualized the study design, conducted the data analysis and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. YNE and AG contributed to the study design, interpretation of study data and critically reviewed the manuscript to provide key intellectual content. Additionally, YNE wrote the blog posts for the survey. MAM contributed to the study design, supervised the data gathering, analysis, and interpretation, and revised the manuscript to provide intellectual content. All authors approved the final manuscript as submitted and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mersine A. Bryan.

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Conflict of interest

None. The authors have indicated they have no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.

Ethical Approval

All human studies have been approved by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institutional Review Board and have been performed in accordance with the ethical standards in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and it’s amendments.

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All participants completed an informed consent form electronically prior to participation.

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Bryan, M.A., Evans, Y.N., Gower, A. et al. Does Exposure to Pediatrician or Parent Blog Content Influence Infant Safe Sleep Practices?. Matern Child Health J 27, 251–261 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-022-03579-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-022-03579-z

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