Estimated to increase breastfeeding rates to an additional 165,000 mothers
making it to 6 months.

Judy

 

"It is unfair that the health benefits of breast-feeding have been
disproportionately available to mothers and children of high socioeconomic
status."

-INSTITUTE FOR WOMEN'S POLICY RESEARCH, in a report examining new workplace
protections for breast-feeding mothers under the Affordable Care Act.
Provisions of the law include allowing nursing breaks and private rooms for
expressing breast milk for "nonexempt" employees who are mothers of babies
younger than 1. The law covers the majority of working women in families
with incomes under $50,000. [via IWPR]

 

 

 

Read more:
http://healthland.time.com/2010/12/17/breast-feeding-will-become-easier-unde
r-the-affordable-care-act/#ixzz18VaG7phF

 

http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/b292.pdf

 

Better Health for Mothers and Children:

Breastfeeding Accommodations under

the Affordable Care Act

By Robert Drago, Ph.D., Jeffrey Hayes, Ph.D., and Youngmin Yi

 

Executive Summary

Given a choice between breastfeeding and using infant formula, most new
mothers select breastfeeding. Employment, however, has often constrained
this choice, obliging mothers to use formula. In recent decades, an
additional option has emerged: expressing breast milk in the workplace and
storing it for later use. This option spares new mothers from having to
choose between breastfeeding and employment.

 

Although no hard numbers are available on the extent of breast milk
expression, indirect evidence suggests that the practice is increasingly
recognized as viable and valued. Most recently, the U.S. Congress passed,
and President Obama signed, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), which
provides for nursing breaks and a private, sanitary place for most mothers
employed on an hourly basis to express breast milk (PPACA 2010).

 

The new ACA breastfeeding provisions raise several questions that are
answered below:

 

How many women breastfeed? How is breastfeeding affected by employment?

 

How do levels of breastfeeding and employment differ among mothers across

lines of income, education, age, and race/ethnicity?

 

How many employed women of childbearing age are covered by the new ACA

provisions? Who among the different demographic groups are covered?

 

How many mothers are likely to breastfeed an infant through six months of
age as a result of the provisions?

 

Our analysis shows that:

 

Women in a relatively weak position in the labor market, including those who

are poor, young, do not hold a college diploma, and who are African
American,

are those who historically have had low rates of breastfeeding, according to

data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
(National

Center for Health Statistics 2010).

 

Mothers in similar groups, including those who are poor, young, do not hold
a

college diploma, or are Hispanic or African American, are most often covered

by ACA workplace breastfeeding protections. This first estimate of coverage
is

based on an analysis of the 2009 Annual Social Economic Supplement (ASEC)

to the Current Population Survey (CPS).

 

The ACA provisions therefore appropriately target mothers who are most
likely

to benefit from the provisions.

 

An estimated total of almost 19 million employed women of childbearing

age are covered by the ACA provisions. That figure is likely an
underestimate

of effective coverage, given that many salaried women who are not formally

covered by this provision in the ACA work alongside hourly workers who are.

ccBased on an analysis of the 2009 ASEC data, a first cautious projection of

the effects of the ACA on rates of breastfeeding is that an additional
165,000

mothers annually will breastfeed until an infant is at least six months old.

 

Although the estimate represents only a four percentage point increase in
rates of breastfeeding among all mothers of infants, more than one million
mothers and their children will be affected over the course of the next six
years, with attendant health benefits for both mothers and infants.
Longer-term effects due to any reduced stigma attached to breastfeeding and
breast milk expression could raise these figures.

 

Results from an earlier study suggest that slightly more than 25,000 mothers

living in poverty do not breastfeed their infants through six months because
of stringent work requirements under the Temporary Assistance to Needy
Families (TANF) program (Haider, Jacknowitz, and Schoeni 2003, p. 492). Our
estimates suggest that an overlapping group of 16,500 mothers living in
poverty will likely breastfeed as a result of the ACA provisions, partly
redressing some of the effects of welfare reform.


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