Sleep Safe Mid-Year Progress Report Due 12/31/2011 (PDF - 186KB)
American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children are at high risk of death due to housefires. Residential fires are the third leading cause of death for AI/AN children ages 1-4. Smoke alarms nearly double the chances of surviving a house fire, yet many reservation homes do not have adequate numbers of working smoke alarms.
Head Starts are uniquely suited for implementing injury prevention projects because of their contact with children and parents. Since 1999, Head Start, Indian Health Service, and US Fire Administration have collaborated on the Sleep Safe Program. The goal of this program is to reduce house fire-related injuries in AI/AN HS children by providing a curriculum for program development and parent/student education, smoke alarms for installation; and an annual program coordinator's training workshop. Photoelectric smoke alarms are provided because they are less sensitive to false alarms from cooking, an important contextual factor in AI/AN communities.
For the 2006-07 school year, the following 21 Head Starts were chosen to implement the fire safety program:
- Pueblo of Jemez Head Start
- St. Croix Tribe Head Start
- Choctaw Nation Head Start
- Menominee Nation Head Start
- Pascua Yaqui Head Start
- Ho-Chunk Nation Head Start
- Dillingham Head Start
- Crow Head Start
- Chickasaw Nation Head Start
- Fond du Lac Head Start
- White Earth Head Start
- Ramah Navajo Head Start
- Aleutian Pribilof Islands Assoc. Head Start
- Kiowa Head Start
- Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Head Start
- Jicarilla Apache Head Start
- Muscogee Creek Nation Head Start
- San Carlos Apache Head Start
- Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians Head Start
- Elko Indian Colony/Duck Valley Head Start
- Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians Head Start
Contact information:
Robert Bialas, R.S.
Captain, USPHS
Early Childhood Health and Safety Specialist Division of Clinical and Community Services IHS Head Start
801 Vassar Drive, NE., Building no. 23
Albuquerque, NM 87106
Phone: 505-248-7694
Fax: 866-396-8843
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