Sudden Unexplained Infant Death Rate Among Black Babies Increased in 2020, New Study Says

A new study has found an overall rise in sudden, unexpected infant deaths between 2019 and 2020 among infants born to non-Hispanic Black families.

SUID is an umbrella term that includes sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed, and ill-defined cause of death.

According to research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Monday in the medical journal Pediatrics, the SUID rate among infants born to non-Hispanic Black families was more than twice as high as the general population, and nearly three times higher than infants born to non-Hispanic White families.

In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, SUID rate for Black babies was the highest it has been since 2017, while the rate for White babies dropped to the lowest it has been since that timeframe.

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Sharyn Parks Brown, an epidemiologist with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Reproductive Health, who co-authored the study, noted that the data found about race was reanalyzed multiple times to make sure the findings were correct.

"We would typically — ideally — look at five years of data in order to see any sort of trend emerging. So, these are very preliminary findings," Parks Brown said, per CNN. "But this is something that we're going to have to continue monitoring."

Before the COVID pandemic, infant mortality had been on a downward trend in the United States, the study said.

The findings added that it is unknown why the SUID rate increased, though it said that COVID and changing death certification practices could be the cause.

Noting several ways in which the COVID pandemic could have played a role, the study said, "increased pressures on families, caregivers, and communities during the pandemic may have limited opportunities for clinical follow-up after birth ... and access to safety-net supports."