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Reimagining Safe Sleep: Using Participant-Generated Photography and Community Insight to Address Infant Mortality
1Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Brooklyn, New York, USA.
Health Equity
|August 12, 2026
Summary
Black mothers in NYC face disparities in infant sleep safety. Their lived experiences, captured through photography, reveal how structural inequities shape infant care, challenging traditional safe sleep guidelines and informing better interventions.
Area of Science:
- Perinatal Health
- Health Equity
- Community-Based Participatory Research
Background:
- Sleep-related infant deaths disproportionately impact Black non-Hispanic families in New York City.
- Traditional safe sleep messaging often fails to resonate with the realities of marginalized communities.
- This creates a disconnect between clinical advice and actual caregiving practices.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore how participant-generated photography can center Black maternal knowledge in infant safety interventions.
- To reimagine perinatal care through the lens of lived experiences.
- To demonstrate the value of visual methods in understanding infant sleep environments.
Main Methods:
- Photo-elicitation interviews were conducted with 30 Black non-Hispanic mothers in New York City.
- Participants photographed their infant's sleep environments (86 images total).
- Images and interviews explored decision-making, lived experiences, and contextual safety, later used in staff training.
Main Results:
- Photographs revealed sleep environments with multiple risk factors by traditional standards.
- Mothers demonstrated sophisticated reasoning based on love, survival, and contextual safety.
- Key themes included multiple caregivers/locations, unplanned sleep, and knowledge-practice adaptation due to structural realities.
Conclusions:
- Participant-generated visual methods can transform perinatal care by highlighting community wisdom.
- This approach reframes deviations from guidelines not as non-compliance but as responses to structural inequities.
- It promotes more equitable, community-informed infant safety interventions.
