Hospital honored for efforts to promote safe sleeping practices

SALISBURY — Rowan Regional Medical Center has been recognized as an Infant Safe Sleep Hospital Leader by the N.C. Healthy Start Foundation in the areas of infant safe sleep policies and best practices.

This award was given to hospitals that have met one to three of the four criteria for the foundation’s inaugural Infant Safe Sleep Hospital Model of Excellence Award.

The purpose of the Model of Excellence Award is to recognize hospitals that are proven leaders in infant safe sleep policy, practice and education. Endorsed by the N.C. Hospital Association and the N.C. Child Fatality Task Force, this award was made available to all hospitals in North Carolina that deliver babies and care for babies less than one year of age.

The award recognizes the steps hospitals have taken, on a voluntary basis, to ensure that hospital policies and practices promote infant safe sleep, said Janice A. Freedman, executive director of the N.C. Healthy Start Foundation.

“The safety of our patients, especially infants and babies, is our number one priority,” Cora Greene, director of women’s and children’s services at Rowan Regional Medical Center, said in a press release. “Our entire staff is dedicated to not only utilizing these best practices in our hospital but also committed to promoting safety with parents, caregivers and the entire community.”

Hospitals must meet four areas of excellence to be recognized as an Infant Safe Sleep Model of Excellence: policy, staff training and education, patient education and modeling and community outreach.

Rowan Regional is one of 15 in the state that applied for this designation and serves as a model for other hospitals. Additional nominations will be accepted in 2012.

Data from the N.C. Center for Health Statistics show that in 2010 there were 854 deaths of children under age one. Fifty-three of these deaths were categorized as SIDS, the leading cause of death for babies between 1 month and 1 year of age, a 46 percent reduction in SIDS deaths from 2009.

To learn more about the Rowan Family Maternity Center at Rowan Regional Medical Center, visit www.myrowanbaby.org or call 704-210-5000.