School’s Breastfeeding Institute to promote Baby-friendly Hospitals through new CDC project
October 27, 2014
The UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute (CGBI), in collaboration with Abt Associates, and the Center for Public Health Quality (CPHQ), is central to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) effort to help hospitals become more “baby-friendly,” that is, more supportive of breastfeeding.
Abt Associates, based in Cambridge, Mass., has been awarded a three-year, $6.6 million contract with CDC to empower these and other organizations to help hospitals encourage breastfeeding. CGBI staff members will recruit hospitals to participate in the program and provide technical support to help hospitals comply with the World Health Organization/UNICEF “Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding” plan.
The Ten Steps are evidence-based practices shown to increase the number of women who initiate breastfeeding and the length of time they breastfeed their infants.
Dr. Miriam Labbok
Dr. Greg Randolph
Key UNC players in the project include CGBI director Miriam Labbok, MD, MPH, IBCLC, Professor of the Practice of maternal and child health at the Gillings School, other CGBI/maternal and child health faculty members, and Greg Randolph, MD, MPH, adjunct professor in the School’s Public Health Leadership Program and professor of pediatrics in the UNC School of Medicine.
Other collaborating organizations include Baby Friendly USA, the designating body for Baby-Friendly Hospitals in the U.S., and Lactation Education Resources, whose team members will provide training on the Ten Steps.
Although many new mothers in the United States intend to breastfeed their new babies, practices and policies in maternity care often create barriers to breastfeeding.
“The improved outcomes from optimal breastfeeding practices are numerous and substantial, yet far too few of our children are getting those benefits,” Randolph said. “We are thrilled to partner with CGBI, Abt Associates and Baby Friendly USA to assist hospitals that serve areas with some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the country in order to improve breastfeeding rates and decrease inequities.”
Labbok, then at Georgetown University, hosted the 1991 launch of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative in the United States. The initiative designates “Baby-Friendly” hospitals that practice the Ten Steps. Hospitals and birthing facilities designated as “baby-friendly” must adhere to the Ten Steps to receive and retain the designation.
In North Carolina, the designation is the suggested next step after a hospital achieves the N.C. Maternity Center Breastfeeding designation. The N.C. designation was instituted by Catherine Sullivan, MPH, RD, LDN, IBCLC, now a CGBI faculty member.
“We are excited to be able to lend our expertise to this CDC-funded effort,” Labbok said. “The project will begin recruiting hospitals for this effort within a month, using a set of criteria to be announced shortly.”
Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: David Pesci, director of communications, (919) 962-2600 or dpesci@unc.edu.
