The new moms project: Educating mothers about sun protection in newborn nurseries

Sun protection habits should begin early in life and be taught as part of r outine preventive health care. Early teaching of parents aims to introduce an easily achieved means of sun protection with the goal of instilling thes e practices as habits in the parents and their young children. We developed a maternity nurse-led intervention for 187 mothers at newborn nurseries in Falmouth, Massachusetts, combining educational material and personal discu ssions. One year after the intervention we successfully contacted 73% of th e mothers. Nearly 90% recalled the informational program and equal numbers stated that receiving educational materials in the newborn nursery was time ly. Nearly two-thirds of mothers reported that this was the only sun protec tion information received from a provider in the past year.