Ask the expert: Professor Helen Ball

How did you get into this area of health – baby sleep – why did you choose to conduct academic research and author publications in this area?

My interest in baby sleep began with my first daughter. We co-slept from birth, and I found it a very positive and rewarding experience. I had not long finished my PhD (in US) in primate behaviour, and I had a background in biology and anthropology. It made complete sense to me that human babies need to be in close contact day and night, for the first year of life. A year after my eldest daughter was born I was appointed to a lectureship at Durham University and very quickly realised I couldn’t continue my previous fieldwork in Puerto Rico from so far away and had to switch focus. No one in the UK was studying parent-baby sleep behaviour, and so I decided to fill that gap. Everyone thought that UK families did not co-sleep with their babies, but I suspected that many of us did, but didn’t talk about it. It turned out I was right about that, and so a long career in studying parent-baby sleep, beginning with understanding how and why parents and babies co-sleep (bed share), began.

SIDS claims the lives of approximately four babies a week in the UK, and the latest ONS stats have shown that SIDS rates have remained similar to last year. How have you seen the rates of SIDS change over the years?

When I began researching infant sleep in the 1990s, SIDS rates were extremely high. The ‘Back to Sleep’ campaign was being heavily promoted to parents, and SIDS rates were just beginning to fall. Over the next decade unexplained infant deaths fell dramatically, and as more SIDS-risks were discovered, the list of safer sleep recommendations grew. But there were some issues, such as bed sharing, where my own research challenged the prevailing recommendation that parents should never bed share. So for a while I was in the position of arguing against some of The Lullaby Trust’s guidance. Thankfully over the past few years, The Lullaby Trust’s position around bed sharing has changed and we are now on the same page in advocating that all families need to know what makes bed sharing unsafe, and how to make it safer, as most parents will end up bed sharing with their baby either intentionally or accidentally, and planning ahead is key to keeping babies safe.

What are the priority areas and goals going forward when it comes to supporting families and improving infant sleep safety?

Nowadays, when unexpected infant deaths happen rarely, we need to focus on two key things:

1) Making sure low-risk families keep receiving information about how to keep their babies sleeping safely so the SUDI rates remain low.

2) Making sure priority families living in impoverished communities, whose risks are higher, understand sleep safety guidance and are able to implement it, so the SUDI rates in these communities are lowered too. This last bit is the most difficult!

How do you think we’ll get there?

In my view the current inequality in SUDI across the UK results from past reliance on a one-size-fits-all approach to universal SUDI-prevention education. While most parents receive and act on this information, some are unable or unwilling to—and these families need extra attention and support to make sure their babies sleep safely. We therefore have to keep raising awareness about unexpected infant deaths, and put extra effort into reaching and helping parents in communities where babies still die unexpectedly.

If you could give one piece of advice to a new or expectant parent, what would it be?

Don’t listen to everyone who tries to tell you how to care for your baby. Consult trusted sources of information (like The Lullaby Trust), and work out what works for your family.

Why do you continue to work with The Lullaby Trust?

We have a shared goal of ensuring preventable deaths of babies are eliminated, and I want parents in the UK to have guidance based on the latest research evidence (that my team produce along with many others). My role on the Scientific Advisory Group and as Chair of the Grants Committee provides the opportunity to do this.