ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. General Pediatrics and Pediatric Emergency Care
Risk and Protective Factors for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in Low-Resource Communities in Kolkata India: A Mixed Methods Exploratory Study of Semi-Structured Interviews and Survey Data
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Pediatrics, Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, United States
- 2Division of Emergency Medicine, Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Chicago, United States
- 3Department of Emergency Medicine, South Florida Baptist Hospital, Plant City, United States
- 4President and Founder, Pratit International, Kolkata, India
- 5Department of Internal Medicine, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore, United States
- 6National Medical Center, Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology, City of Hope, Duarte, United States
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Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID), Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and infant sleep practices are widely documented and studied in high-resource countries. Knowledge of SUID/SIDS occurrence, risk factors and protective factors in low or middle-resource countries such as India is lacking. The was an exploratory study using a mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) approach to better understand infant sleep practices and the various factors that may influence them amongst caregivers in 5 low-income communities in Kolkata, India. Twenty-eight and 22 caregivers of infants<12 months old were recruited using a convenience sampling approach to participate in semi-structured interviews (phase 1) and a survey (phase 2), respectively. This research was conducted in partnership with Pratit International, a locally based NGO dedicated to providing comprehensive health care to disenfranchised communities in Kolkata. Analysis of qualitative and quantitative data found that infant caregivers in this community frequently described risk factors (e.g. bedsharing, soft sleep surface, infant sleep position, objects in sleep area, environmental smoke exposure, low rates of pacifier use) and protective factors (e.g. breastfeeding, routine immunization/prenatal care, low rates of caregiver substance use) that have been associated with SIDS in high resource communities. Prenatal and postnatal sleep education given by a healthcare professional were limited and awareness of safer sleep advice in the community was low. These findings suggest the need for future studies to guide interventions to provide directed and culturally appropriate infant sleep education.
Keywords: infant sleep, Environmental factor, Sleep environment, India, SUID (sudden unexpected infant death), SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), Infant Care
Received: 24 Jun 2025; Accepted: 04 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Samreth, Leader, Kiely, Chakrabarti and Kapoor. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Susan Samreth, ssamreth@luriechildrens.org
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