Nothing is more chilling to parents of newborns than the possibility of sudden unexpected infant death (SUID), which accounts for about 3,400 newborn deaths annually in the United States. And while campaigns promoting safe sleeping practices have contributed to fewer of these deaths overall, a study published this week in JAMA Network Open found that SUID rates have increased since 2020 for Black babies while they’ve stayed relatively stable for White infants.
“This uptick, and the fact that there is a racial disparity component, is so alarming,” Leslie Root, PhD, senior author and assistant research professor in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in a university press release. “We need to address it.”
SUID driving increase in infant deaths
Root and her colleagues used a cross-sectional study to examine federal data for almost 58 million live births, including 366,384 Black infant deaths and 224,733 White infant deaths from January 2003 to December 2024. The infant mortality rate was more than twice as high for Black babies as for their White peers.
Black moms gave birth to preterm babies—those born at 37 weeks or earlier—more often than White moms (16.9% vs 10.5%). Preterm birth represented the No. 1 reason for the difference in infant mortality rate between the two groups.