Ten years ago, young mothers came to Judy Bannon's South Side office to get free cribs so they wouldn't have to use their car seats as beds for their babies.

"Everyone was making sure they had a car seat, but no one was asking where the baby would sleep," said Ms. Bannon, executive director of SIDS of Pennsylvania.

The group, which works to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, started providing cribs in 1998 when Allegheny County Child Death Review statistics showed that cribs were important in the prevention of SIDS and accidental suffocation.

Today, car seats are required by law. And Ms. Bannon, of Elizabeth Township, continues to champion an effort to give babies a safe place to sleep. Recently, she received the Making a Difference Award from the National Center for Child Death Review in Washington, D.C. Review teams located in nearly every state examine deaths in children from birth through age 19 to determine how they may have been prevented.

It's been an amazing journey, Ms. Bannon said of her 20 years at the job. The group began in 1981 with a mission to comfort families whose children had died and has expanded to include a program called Cribs for Kids.

Deaths from SIDS were cut in half after the American Academy of Pediatrics began recommending in 1992 that babies be put to sleep on their backs, said Eileen Carlins, director of education for SIDS of Pennsylvania.

But the decline leveled off in Allegheny County in 1998, said Ms. Carlins. The organization began to notice trends that led it to start providing cribs for parents who could not afford them.

According to the Allegheny County Health Department, from 2001 to 2006, the county had 68 sudden unexpected infant deaths -- 66 of them linked to unsafe sleeping environments, said Guillermo Cole, public information officer for Allegheny County Health Department. Unsafe sleeping environments for infants include couches, beds with parents or siblings, and cribs with soft bedding.

And the Review Team found that the majority of victims are from low-income families.

"We looked for a way to change those numbers," Ms. Bannon said. Rotary clubs throughout Allegheny County helped the group with seed money to buy cribs.

Ms. Bannon gathered the statistics and safe sleep information and placed it on a disc she called the Cribs for Kids Tool Kit. The first to ask for a copy of the kit was the director of maternal and child health division of New York City's Health Department.

The SIDS group found that full-size cribs were too large and often difficult to put together, so Ms. Bannon met with representatives of Graco Children's Products, which manufactures cribs and other infant items. In 2006, SIDS of Pennsylvania forged a partnership with Graco to distribute "Pack 'n Play," a portable crib for smaller spaces that was easy to set up and take down, at a cost of $50, $20 lower than retail.

"As orders grew, we had to decide how to ship them," Ms. Bannon said. To her surprise, local shipping company Pitt Ohio Express agreed to ship cribs free in the areas it serves.

"They came to our little warehouse and took our cribs to Michigan. For $50, we put a child in a safe sleep environment," Ms. Bannon said. FedEx recently agreed to send cribs to other areas at a discount.

"We began ordering cribs 300 at a time. Now we bring in three containers per month and each has 1,513 in it," Ms. Bannon said.

Money for cribs continues to come from grants and donations.

While Allegheny County had a drop in deaths from SIDS between 1998 and 2004, a study released in January by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that the national infant mortality rate attributable to accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed had quadrupled since 1984.

SIDS of Pennsylvania and the Allegheny County Health Department says the ideal sleep environment for a baby is to be placed on his back, alone in a crib in a smoke-free home.

To further the prevention effort in Pennsylvania, Ms. Bannon helped write the language for House Bill 47, sponsored by state Rep. Lawrence Curry, D-Montgomery. The bill requires every mother in Pennsylvania, before leaving the hospital, to view a video about safe sleep habits and sign an acknowledgment that she has received the information. If the mother does not have a crib and cannot afford one, Cribs for Kids will provide one. The bill has passed in the state House. A companion bill, Senate Bill 577, has been introduced by Sen. John Pippy, R-Moon. Ms. Bannon hopes it passes by fall.

To raise funds for more cribs, SIDS will hold the Graco Riverfront SIDS Stroll on Sunday along the riverfront trail beginning at the group's North Shore offices at 810 River Ave. For more, go to www.cribsforkids.org.