ABSTRACT
Federal involvement in research on sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) began in 1963 when the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) supported an international conference in Seattle, Washington. In 1969, a second international conference was organized under the auspices of the NICHD and included presentations on the epidemiology of SIDS from Canada, Czechoslovakia, Northern Ireland, and the United States (US). Community-wide ascertainment of cases for epidemiologic purposes depends upon the extent to which all suspected SIDS episodes are identified and subjected to post-mortem examination by qualified medical examiners. Seasonal variation in SIDS incidence has been reported in nearly all epidemiologic studies. The magnitude of seasonality trends varies widely from one country to the next and indeed within a single community from year to year. Many researchers have reported significant differences in SIDS incidence for various ethnic groups in the US
