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Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
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Sat, 16 Feb 2002 13:34:45 EST
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Magda asked a good question regarding where the US was in relation to some of
the international breastfeeding tools. First of all, the US has a national
breastfeeding committee. The US Breastfeeding Committee was "officially"
founded in 1998 fulfilling part of the Innocenti Declaration (it had been
meeting since 1995 as the National Breastfeeding Leadership Roundtable). The
US also has about 1% of its hospitals with maternity services holding the
Baby Friendly award. The Code has gained more recognition in the US since
NABA published the country report on the results of the Code monitoring
project carried out in the summer of 2000. Many states have enacted laws that
encourage worksite protection for breastfeeding.

The US Breastfeeding Committee published its national breastfeeding agenda
document calling for a number of improvements based on these international
documents. The Department of Health and Human Services issued its Blueprint
for Action on Breastfeeding, specifically mentioning the Code, worksite
protection, the 10 steps, etc.

While the US may not be the world's model for breastfeeding support it has
launched a big media effort to promote and support breastfeeding through a
project from the Office on Women's Health. I represent ILCA at the
Breastfeeding Promotion Consortium, a consortium of governmental and
non-governmental agencies and organizations convened by the US Department of
Agriculture which is working hard on identifying where breastfeeding research
is needed, helping agencies collect breastfeeding data, and endeavoring to
better define breastfeeding for research, program, and surveillance purposes.
I represent NABA to the US Breastfeeding Committee which is preparing summary
documents on different aspects of breastfeeding such as the cost of not
breastfeeding, worksite issues, etc for presentation at a press conference in
Washington, DC later this year. I will be presenting an hour and a half
lecture next week on all that is happening!

I think we may be making the type of progress defined as two steps forward
and one step backward, but at least there is an increased amount of activity
at state and federal levels.

Marsha Walker, RN, IBCLC
Weston, MA

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