Abstract
I have been out of practice now for 16 years, but the information that is available now would have been extremely helpful to me in what was really a family practice.
I will tell you a little bit about my personal history. I have two daughters. Both of them were breastfed: the first one for almost 6 months, and the other one for about 3 months, as I recall, because that is over 30 years ago now.
But I also remember those days of trying to express breastmilk, and I do not know if there was anything other than that thing with the ball on the end. But that is what I had, and I have to tell you, I gave up. My daughters had new, fancy equipment, and it was much easier, and they were really able to do it successfully.
Of my two daughters, the younger one breastfed her two daughters for over 6 months: one for about a year and one for maybe about 8 months, but my second daughter had difficulty with both of her children. But, she did express the breastmilk for several months. And I never went to one of the counseling sessions with her, but it just seemed like, as I listened to her, a natural process has become so complicated and so technical that I think she developed a lot of anxiety over whether she was doing it the right way or not, and that did not help.
And it may or may not have helped her if her counselor was African-American. It may not have made a difference in my daughter's counseling, but for many people who are of color, it is really important, I think, that they have somebody talking to them who is of the same background, and of course definitely speaks the same language.
So this organization and all of the partners that join you, these summits are really important, because all of us agree, as the Surgeon General's Call to Action, states, quote, “One of the most highly effective preventive measures a mother can take to protect the health of her infant and herself is to breastfeed.” And all of us have a role to play, then, in making breastfeeding easier for mothers.
So one of the other things that the invitation caused me to do was to look and see what role Congress might be playing. Since all of us do have a role, what role we were playing to support and encourage breastfeeding? And I found three bills, which I am proud to say I am now a cosponsor of.
The first one was HR 3620, the Quality Care for Mothers and Babies, and the second one, HR 2758, the Breastfeeding Promotion Act of 2011. Both were introduced by New Yorkers, so the New York group has obviously been doing a great job. The third one, HR 2029, the Birth Defects Prevention, Risk Reduction and Awareness Act of 2011, was introduced by Congresswoman DeLauro of Connecticut. It also has great language supporting breastfeeding. And all of these bills are also introduced in the Senate.
My search also brought up our bill, the Health Equity and Accountability Act, which is a Tri-Caucus bill that my staff and I have worked on through the five iterations of it. It was introduced at the end of last year, this time by Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who chairs Health for the Asian Pacific Caucus. And our staff, in writing the latest version, made sure to include the language from HR 2029. So there is a section in which there are—and I am quoting from the bill—“provisions to launch a national media campaign as well as for the Secretary to provide grants to the states to raise awareness in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner, and among health care providers and at-risk populations about the benefits of breastfeeding, as well as provisions that direct the Secretary to evaluate the most effective models that have increased the number of mothers who breastfeed.” So we are really pleased that that is a part of the bill, and we encourage you to support its passage.
We were able to include a lot of the provisions from the previous versions of this bill into the Affordable Care Act, which also has language that requires employers to accommodate breastfeeding mothers.
I also took a look at what was happening at home in the U.S. Virgin Islands. And I know we have had a great breastfeeding awareness campaign by our WIC program [Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children]. We do have policies in place that require employers to accommodate women who are breastfeeding. Our data are a little bit sketchy, but, in 2009, there were 833 women who had breastfed or were breastfeeding their babies. So far in 2012, out of 1,265 women in the WIC program, there were only 65 fully breastfeeding, but there are 668 who are breastfeeding and also using other foods.
So that is over half, and we will continue to look at this, because, as I said, they have had a really great campaign, and I am not sure why only 65 of those women are really fully breastfeeding. So that is something that our office can take a look at.
But this is an important issue for the Tri-Caucus. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, none of the racial and ethnic minority groups reached the Healthy People 2010 goals, and it is clear that African-Americans have the lowest rates. Lower-income families generally have lower rates, and our racial and ethnic population groups are disproportionately low-income. But it was interesting in looking at some of the reports that among Mexican-Americans, no matter what their poverty level, their breastfeeding rates remained high. And I am sure there is something that all of us can learn from that.
I want to mention one other reason that breastfeeding is important in our communities, and that is the fostering of optimal early brain development in our children. We know from research that the brain is only 25% developed at birth, and that there are billions of cells yet to be connected. And how they are connected is influenced by their earliest life experiences.
With good nurturing experiences, those connections take place in positive ways. It has been shown that experiences of neglect and abuse could cause even what would have been a normal child to become mentally retarded or develop serious emotional difficulties. How the brain is encoded during these first years of brain development “establishes lifelong patterns for peace or for violence, for love or for hate, for mental excellence or mental mediocrity, for creative social harmony or social alienation and discord,” according to one report.
So what better way to foster the development of our children's brains for peace, for love, for mental excellence, and for creative social harmony than breastfeeding? And so we, the Tri-Caucus, and also the Progressive Caucus, the Children's Caucus, the Out of Poverty Caucus, and many others, look forward to working with the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine and all of your partners to increase research on the barriers to breastfeeding in women of color and poor women. And to promote breastfeeding not as an alternative, but as the routine, as the primary way to feed our babies. That is your goal, and it must be ours as well.