National Skin-To-Skin Challenge Launches In Canadian NICUs

A new Canada-wide NICU initiative is putting a spotlight on one of the simplest forms of newborn care: holding a baby skin-to-skin. The Canadian Premature Babies Foundation says 48 hospitals across the country are taking part in the first National Kangaroo-A-Thon, a month-long effort to increase and track Kangaroo Care hours in Level 2 and Level 3 neonatal intensive care units from May 1 to 30. The campaign officially launches on May 15, which is also Kangaroo Care Awareness Day in Canada.

Kangaroo Care—also called skin-to-skin care—involves placing a newborn directly on a parent or caregiver’s chest. For premature and medically fragile babies, it has been linked to benefits including better temperature regulation, breastfeeding support, improved physiologic stability and shorter hospital stays.

“Canada’s first National Kangaroo-A-Thon is an important step toward building national momentum around Kangaroo Care,” Fabiana Bacchini, executive director of the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation, said in a press release. “By bringing hospitals together around a shared goal, we can better understand how skin-to-skin care is being used across NICUs and help more families access this practice when their babies need it most.”

The foundation says the goal is to help make skin-to-skin care a more consistent part of NICU care across Canada, where practices can still vary from hospital to hospital despite the evidence behind it.

Why NICU teams are pushing for more skin-to-skin care

For families, Kangaroo Care can offer a way to bond with a baby in a setting that can otherwise feel highly medical and overwhelming.

“The parents of NICU babies are often grieving the birth and bonding that they were not able to have,” neonatologist Dr. Janene Fuerch said in the release. “Skin-to-skin is one of the few things in the NICU that a parent can do that no machine nor clinician can do better.”

A parent quoted in the release, Ashleigh Lewis, said Kangaroo Care became a major priority while her twins were in the NICU. “It allowed me to safely give the twins an incredible amount of skin-to-skin time,” she said.

The initiative is also being supported by Joeyband, a Canadian company that makes a skin-to-skin support device. Earlier this year, the company donated more than 110 NICU skin-to-skin devices to the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation for use in hospitals across Canada.

What happens next

Participating hospitals will track Kangaroo Care hours through the end of May, with results expected after the initiative wraps. Organizers hope the data will help show how skin-to-skin care is being used across Canadian NICUs—and where more support may still be needed.

This article was crafted with the assistance of an AI language model. The final content was reviewed and edited by a human and reflects the editorial judgment and expertise of Today's Parent.