UNC - breastfeeding institute awarded W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant

Dr. Miriam Labbok

The institute, based in the public health school’s Department of Maternal and Child Health, carries out innovative efforts to improve breastfeeding support for underserved populations in North Carolina and beyond.

“Breastfeeding can reduce the four major preventable killers of infants – pneumonias, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), infections and major causes of deaths in premature infants – as well as reducing obesity, diabetes, cancers and ear infections,” said Miriam Labbok, MD, MPH, who is CGBI director and Professor of the Practice at the UNC public health school. “This support will help address the current shameful disparities in these diseases created by inequities in breastfeeding success.”

Specifically, the grant supports innovative initiatives, including:

• improving breastfeeding support in child care centers by replicating the Ten Steps to Infant Feeding Success in Child Care Centers approach;
• development of a better understanding of the role and impact of donor milk banking in the U.S.;
• a new interstate collaboration to support change in breastfeeding-related health-care practices;
• development of innovative tools for prenatal counseling; and
• other activities to address the needs of populations most at risk.

“CGBI is a unique center,” said Herbert Peterson, MD, Kenan Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Maternal and Child Health. “It is the only institute dedicated specifically to breastfeeding support, with comprehensive, innovative and creative research, teaching and service, in a school of public health. As such, it is well placed to bring new life into state and national interventions and to support those who need it most.”

“The Kellogg Foundation is pleased to support and partner with CGBI in this work because we believe that breast milk is the optimal first food to give to all children a healthy start so that they can thrive in school, work and life,” said Diana N. Derige, program officer at the foundation.

The Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute strives to create an enabling environment in which all women may achieve optimal breastfeeding, as well as optimal birth and birth-spacing, as needed for their health and the health of their children. For further information on CGBI, please contact Dr. Miriam Labbok, at (919) 966-0928, or visit http://cgbi.sph.unc.edu.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, founded in 1930 as an independent, private foundation by breakfast cereal pioneer, Will Keith Kellogg, is among the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States. Guided by the belief that all children should have an opportunity to thrive, the foundation works with communities to create conditions for vulnerable children so they can realize their full potential in school, work and life. The Kellogg Foundation is based in Battle Creek, Mich., and works throughout the U.S. and internationally, as well as with sovereign tribes. Special emphasis is paid to priority places where there are high concentrations of poverty and where children face significant barriers to success. WKKF priority places in the U.S. are in Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and New Orleans, and internationally, in Mexico and Haiti. For more information, visit www.wkkf.org.

UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Linda Kastleman, communications editor, (919) 966-8317 or linda_kastleman@unc.edu.