More babies sleep safely.

The public health message telling caregivers to put babies to sleep on their backs has paid off: A new study reports that between 1992 and 1996 the frequency of babies being put to sleep on their stomachs dropped by 66 percent.

Previous research had suggested that babies who sleep on their stomachs face a greater risk of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS. It is the leading cause of death for U.S. infants between the age of one month and one year.

Marian Willinger of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in Bethesda, Md., and her colleagues interviewed about 1,000 caregivers of infants annually.

The team found that infants were placed on their stomachs by 70 percent of caregivers in 1992--before the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that babies be put to sleep on their backs or on their sides. In 1996, just 24 percent were putting infants to sleep on their stomachs, the team reports in the July 22/29 Journal of the American Medical Association.

However, Willinger's study and two others that appear in the same issue indicate that greater educational efforts may be needed. A study by Ruth A. Brenner, also at NICHD, discovered that about 40 percent of low-income, inner-city mothers put their infants to sleep in the hazardous stomach position.

Moreover, Samuel M. Lesko of Boston University reported that almost 30 percent of 7,796 mothers across a range of income levels had switched their babies from the back to the stomach sleeping position at about 3 months, an age when they are still vulnerable to SIDS. The younger moms were more likely to change their baby to the less safe position.