I thought all of you might be interested in what happened here in
Massachusetts yesterday. Our Public Health Council approved the Department of Public
health's recommendations updating our state perinatal regulations. One
provision is that hospitals will no longer be able to distribute commercial gift bags
from formula companies. Below is the press release from the Massachusetts
Breastfeeding Coalition. We worked long and hard with hours of meetings along
with public and written testimony. I think mothers and babies in our state will
be one step further along for enjoying optimal health outcomes. If this
press release is garbled, you can go to _www.massbfc.org_
(http://www.massbfc.org) to see the release.
Marsha Walker, RN, IBCLC
Weston, MA
Massachusetts Becomes First State to Prohibit Formula Marketing in Hospitals
Boston, December 20, 2005— In a groundbreaking step for mothers and babies,
Massachusetts became the first state to prohibit hospitals from giving out
free formula company diaper bags to new parents. Giving out these bags reduces
the duration and exclusivity of breastfeeding and is considered unethical by
many national and international groups, including the World Health
Organization. Multiple studies, even from prestigious medical journals such as the
Lancet, have shown that the bags interfere with breastfeeding, causing moms to
switch to formula sooner, or quit nursing altogether-- even when the bags do
not contain formula samples.
For decades, formula companies used hospitals to hand out diaper bags
stocked with coupons and free samples. Most parents see these as a “free gift,”
but the bags are a marketing technique that implies that the hospital endorses
the product, successfully boosting sales of formula at the expense of
breastfeeding. “One day, formula marketing in hospitals will go the way of cigarette
ads on TV,” said Melissa Bartick, MD, Chair of the Massachusetts
Breastfeeding Coalition.
The new rules on formula marketing are part of a much larger update of
existing perinatal regulations written by the Department of Public Health and
today approved by the Public Health Council. Hospitals must follow DPH
regulations in order to be allowed to operate in the state. The regulations contain
many other mandates that help promote and support breastfeeding and otherwise
limit formula marketing.
In banning the distribution of these items, the DPH acknowledges that there
is no medical justification for the institutional marketing of formula
products to new parents. The vast majority of hospitals in Massachusetts and the US
give out free diaper bags containing formula to new moms, and also accept
free formula for in-hospital use. This marketing practice deviates from the
standards followed by health care providers and hospitals in every other
respect. For example, hospitals do not give out coupons for name-brand clothing,
name-brand foods outside of maternity. “We’d never tolerate the thought of
hospitals giving out coupons for Big Macs on the cardiac unit,” said Dr. Bartick,
an internist. Since lack of breastfeeding is clearly associated with
multiple adverse health outcomes in children and mothers, distribution of formula
marketing materials by hospitals and health care providers has been recognized
as unethical since at least 1981, when the World Health Organization approved
the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes.
Members of MBC on the taskforce that drafted the new regulations helped make
the case for eliminating the diaper bags. The formula bags may actually
cost families money: “Not only is there the expense of formula, but parents and
society end up paying for medications and time lost from work to care for a
sick child,” says Dr. Kimberly Lee, a neonatologist at Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center in Boston.
As proof of the companies’ influence, Dr. Lee notes that parents almost
always continue to use the brand of formula their baby got in the hospital—and
those formulas are typically the most expensive.
These new regulations will go far in improving the quality of care to
mothers and their newborns.
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