The US Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) rate has declined since the institution of the Back to Sleep campaign in 1944. This report investigates epidemiological trends in 751 SIDS deaths in Philadelphia over the past 10 years. Table

Table 1
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The SIDS rate has declined 32% in both white and nonwhite groups. Despite this change, a substantial racial disparity in SIDS rates persists. A second important difference is the apparant loss of the winter peak in SIDS, with a decrease in winter SIDS from 41% to 34% of the yearly total. There were no other significant differences between time periods, although the data indicates a trend toward a decreasing male predominance and older age at death inthe more recent SIDS group. The contribution of SIDS death to the post-neonatal mortality rate remains statistically unchanged (50.8% to 43.2%, p=ns) suggesting there were no significant diagnostic shifts to account for the decline in the SIDS rate.