SUDI Prevention

Te Kura Mokopuna: Mā te tamaiti te iho encapsulates our approach to protecting our mokopuna. Any mokopuna tragically lost to SUDI is unacceptable. We lose 30-50 mokopuna in any given year—our future rangatira, leaders, doctors, writers, and artists. When we lose a child, we lose whakapapa and with the loss of a child comes the lost opportunity to nurture, grow, and create. Our mokopuna are precious taonga who hold immeasurable potential, which they must be able to realise.

Our SUDI Prevention focuses on protecting the breathing spaces and places surrounding our mokopuna. SUDI Prevention is not only about safe sleep but also encompasses the facilitation of breath in all environments, considering all determinants of health.

By building transformational connections with whānau across Aotearoa, we hope they will themselves become advocates and further spread the message Mā te tamaiti te iho

What Hāpai is doing in this space

At Hāpai, we see ourselves as Connectors. We bridge and connect current clinical knowledge and experience to whānau strengths and needs to increase their knowledge and skills, ensuring mokopuna can thrive and prevent the tragedy of SUDI.

Our role is to alert whānau to potentially dangerous spaces and ensure our message reaches all communities, particularly those in high-SUDI environments.

We achieve this by:

• Ensuring we are up to date with best-practice clinical information and practices
• Ensuring we have current evidence from whānau to inform messaging and information dissemination
• Developing digital apps as education resources for  whānau and community
• Developing health promotion and messaging that engages with our whānau and raises awareness around SUDI prevention
• Increasing the pool of weavers who facilitate wahakura wānanga weaving in Māori parenting knowledge with safe sleep messaging
• Providing workforce development opportunities for groups and communities to increase their capacity and knowledge around parenting and SUDI prevention
• Coordination of key SUDI activities regionally to gather insights that identify trends and inform practise 
• Providing strategic advice on public health issues that directly impact health outcomes for Māori
• Advocating for improvement in Māori health outcomes/s through public health and health promotion, networking and linking with the broader public Health Sector
• Public Health campaigns and media