During the first year of the pandemic, the United States saw a spike in the number of Black infants who died suddenly — worsening a longstanding disparity, a new government study finds.
The increase was seen in what’s called sudden unexpected infant death, or SUID. It’s a term used when a baby younger than one year dies from no immediately obvious cause, often during sleep. SUID includes cases of the much better-known SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), as well as incidents where babies accidentally suffocate during sleep, and deaths where no cause can be determined.
Overall, the United States has seen a drop in those sudden infant deaths since the 1990s, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That success is attributed largely to public health campaigns encouraging safer infant sleep practices. For years, parents have been advised to put their baby to sleep on the back, not the tummy; keep cribs free of blankets and other loose bedding; and avoid bed-sharing with their baby.
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Despite the declining overall rate of SUID, however, racial disparities have persisted.
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Why the spike in Black infants?
Now, in this latest study, the CDC found that sudden deaths among Black infants rose between 2019 and 2020, but held steady or declined among babies of other races and ethnicities.
The result was a widening in the disparity that already existed pre-pandemic, says Sharyn Parks, one of the CDC researchers who worked on the study.
In 2020, Black families had over double the risk of losing an infant to SUID, versus the average for the country as a whole. For every 100,000 Black infants born that year, 214 died suddenly — up from about 190 per 100,000 in 2019, the study found.
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Meanwhile, SUID rates were lower, and did not spike in 2020, among white, Hispanic or Asian-American infants.
