Program Manual & Trainer's Guide

Advancing Knowledge, Expanding Mandate

This Program Manual and Trainer's Guide is an online adaptation of a document published in 2006 by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau. It was, and continues to be, a collaborative effort between four federally-funded centers focused on sudden and unexpected infant/child death and pregnancy loss.

In the years since the initial publication of the SIDS & Infant Death Program Manual and Trainer's Guide, the SIDS field, once focused on sudden, unexpected death of infants aged one year and under, has grown to encompass pregnancy loss (miscarriage and stillbirth), as well as unexpected death of children older than one year of age.

As such, taking this document online presents an opportunity to present updated and expanded material that reflects the latest advances in both clinical knowledge and prevailing practices for prevention, as well as supports for families dealing with the loss of a child.

We invite you to use the navigation at the left to access the online Program Manual and Trainer's Guide. You may print individual pages from this site; as on online resource, there is not an option to print the entire manual and guide. We invite you to bookmark and refer to this resource often, as content and links will change often as they are updated.

Winner of a 2010 APEX Award for Publication Excellence in the Education and Training/Electronic & Video Publication category!

Program Manual The purpose of the Program Manual is to support the staff of local and State programs to provide comprehensive Sudden Unexpected Infant Death/Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SUID/SIDS) risk reduction and bereavement program services so that children have the best possible chance for survival and if a child does die, his family is appropriately supported. The manual is designed for program staff who include Title V program staff, child-health staff, nurses, health educators, Child Death Review (CDR) teams, Fetal Infant Mortality Review (FIMR) teams, Healthy Start staff and nonprofit staff. Trainer's Guide The manual also includes a trainer’s guide, specifically adapted from the National Cancer Institute, which focuses on how to conduct trainings, presentations and informational sessions to a variety of audiences.

 

Click on the Menu at left to enter the Program Manual or Trainer's Guide, or click HERE to view full site Table of Contents

The Four Centers: Helping Babies, Healing Families

The federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau supports a consortium of four national centers, linked in the navigation bar at left, that address issues surrounding sudden unexpected infant/child death and pregnancy loss. This is done by providing an array of coordinated resources and services for a broad constituency in the public and private sector including state and local efforts, as well as families and others impacted by such loss.

The Centers "help babies" by focusing on best practices, from pre-natal self-care through childbirth and into the early years of parenthood; and "heal families" by providing resources for families affected by the loss of a child - whether during pregnancy, infancy or early childhood - and their extended support networks including local and state programs as well as healthcare providers.

Developed by the Program Support Center at First Candle with collaborative assistance from the Sudden and Unexpected Infant/Child Death and Pregnancy Loss Centers.