Naomi Post Joins Effort
Jill Porter - 10/12/04

PLAN AIMS AT CO-SLEEPING PERIL

 IN WHAT can only be good news for the city and its vulnerable infants, Philadelphia first lady Naomi Post will help launch a public-awareness campaign today about the potentially fatal danger to an infant when families share a bed.
 Post's considerable prestige and credibility as a lifelong child advocate surely will command attention as the city alerts families to the risks of the practice known as co-sleeping.
 Post will speak this afternoon when city officials announce details of a comprehensive effort to educate families that the safest place for an infant to sleep is on his or her back, alone in an uncluttered crib.
 Post's unusual public role was prompted by revelations in my columns that dozens of infants have smothered while sharing a bed with other people in the last 18 months, while city officials kept mum.
 After conversations with the commissioners of health and human services, Post "became convinced that the time was upon us to get serious with a public awareness message about this, and felt compelled to offer her assistance to help get the message out," said Frank Keel, communications consultant for DHS.
 Post - who declined to be interviewed before the press conference - will have an ongoing, though as yet undefined, role in the public awareness effort, Keel said.
 The campaign will include televised public service announcements, newspaper ads, posters to be put on display all over the city - from stores to rec centers to hospitals - an instructional video to be shown to new parents and outreach to individual families through community based organizations, among other efforts.
 It's a massive initiative that will be combined with a program operated by the Maternity Care Coalition that provides free cribs to needy families.
 Today's announcement and Post's involvement represent a dramatic - and commendable - reversal for the city, which until a month ago had remained silent while the tally of children who died while co-sleeping mounted.
 Since last April, 48 babies in the city have died while sharing a bed with other people. Eight of them died of "overlaying," literally when another person rolled over on them. But the rest died of asphyxiation, which is categorized as SIDS, for unknown reasons.
 An additional 22 babies died of SIDS during that time, but not while co-sleeping.
 But Health Department officials continued to insist that co-sleeping was safe if practiced correctly, obviously swayed by avid supporters of co-sleeping - including militant breast-feeding advocates who say the practice promotes nursing.
 City Managing Director Phil Goldsmith intervened and prompted an about-face by Health Commissioner John Domzalski.
 Since then, Domzalski and DHS Commissioner Cheryl Ransom-Garner have joined in planning the far-reaching public awareness campaign that will be announced today.
 The involvement of Naomi Post can only help give weight to this issue, especially since she rarely enters the spotlight willingly.
 Post is co-chair of the Mayor's Commission on Children. However, she's not doing this in that capacity, Keel said, but "as the first lady, as a well-known child advocate and as a mother and grandmother in her own right."
 Post and Mayor Street have three grandchildren, ages 5, 2 and 2 1/2.
 Post, former director of Philadelphia Safe and Sound, is now a consultant for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Urban Health Initiative.
 "I don't know of any other issue that has prompted her to want to get out in front," Keel said, saying she preferred to work behind the scenes.
 "For this one, she feels compelled to get out."
 And by doing so, she'll no doubt help the city save infants' lives.

Bravo.