Abstract
B • “Interventions Designed to Promote Exclusive Breastfeeding in High-Income Countries: A Systematic Review” by Skouteris et al.
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• “A Mixed-Methods Observational Study of Human Milk Sharing Communities on Facebook” by Perrin et al.
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• “Breastfeeding Throughout Pregnancy in Turkish Women” by Ayrim et al.
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These are only three of the articles this month that expand our collective knowledge about critical breastfeeding issues.
Equally powerful in the surge in breastfeeding is the outstanding work of the W.W. Kellogg Foundation. Welcomed into the arena in 2009 by the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, the W.W. Kellogg Foundation provided the grant for the first summit on breastfeeding in celebration of 25 years of Surgeon General C. Everett Koop's first workshop, Breastfeeding and Human Lactation. Challenged by the goals from 1984 4 and reset in 2009, the summits moved the focus to involvement of the business community, medical insurance providers, and government agencies.
The Kellogg Foundation got it. They were on board—not only on board, but totally committed. They began funding other breastfeeding efforts, those that provided leadership, education of providers, and even hands-on services. They have become focused on the disparity among mothers who breastfeed. The foundation has a long history of solving problems of disparity and tremendous knowledge and expertise in this grave social science issue. On March 10–12, 2014, in San Antonio, TX, they hosted a national summit focused on the disparities in breastfeeding. What was most important was their inclusion of representatives of the groups with the lowest breastfeeding rates such as ROSE (Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere) and the Detroit Black Mothers Breastfeeding Coalition, to note but two. The entire gathering was guided through the essential steps of focusing on an issue, what one must give, and what one gets in return. Participants were guided in thinking through the issues with the opportunity to review their own individual needs.
If one examines the history of infant feeding as reported by Apple 5 in her text in 1960, “A History of Infant Feeding, 1850–1950,” women have always expressed their opinions about infant feeding: first by example and advice, generation to generation, then more publicly in women's magazines, and finally by scientific evaluation.
Well known is the adage, “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man how to fish, he eats for a lifetime.”
Applying this metaphor to infant feeding, “Give an infant a bottle, he gets food for a day. Teach mother to breastfeed and he eats for months and is healthy for a lifetime.”
In 1940 Dr. Edith Jackson at Yale University Hospital began the Rooming-in Project, which introduced natural childbirth, rooming in, skin-to-skin, and breastfeeding in this country. In the 1940s and 1950s all the mothers in the clinics breastfed, especially the uneducated and impoverished mothers. It was passed on from generation to generation. In the 1970s canned formula became readily available, and then the Women, Infants, and Children Program began giving out formula as if it was better to let industry feed our precious infants. It has taken many years, much science, and tremendous effort on the part of healthcare providers and women themselves, especially La Leche League International, to reverse the trend.
We have often said, “Breastfeeding is the most precious gift a mother can give her infant. If there is infection or illness, it may be a lifesaving gift. If there is poverty it may be the only gift.”
As the circle widens, more people learn, and mothers demand the best for their babies, even the disparity among families involving breastfeeding will vanish. With the added thrust of the W.W. Kellogg Foundation, breastfeeding disparity will become history.