The summer before we produced this campaign, two Mississippi children died as a result of being forgotten in a car on a warm day. While there were a lot of facts and figures surrounding these tragic accidents, we distilled the message down to a couple of clear ideas: your child’s body temperature rises five times faster than yours does, which can mean heatstroke or death in just minutes.
The focus here was on education – so rather than just telling a sad story, we also shared a recommendation for how to make sure parents never forget a child in the car.
In the year before we produced the Safe Sleep campaign, twenty-two children died in the state of Mississippi as a result of unsafe sleeping environment (mostly co-sleeping with a caregiver). Many caregivers didn’t understand that even if they never rolled onto the child, soft mattresses and heavy blankets put infants at risk for suffocation.
While we highlighted how dangerous co-sleeping can be, the purpose of the campaign was also to demonstrate what a safe, secure sleeping environment looks like.
