Kathleen Auerbach has informed me that my introduction arrived in garbled form--perhaps because it was too long it occurs to me. So here I resend a part of it, including a part she thought might incite responses from some members: Greetings from a Stockholm finally emerging from its dark winter (but where winters are hardly colder than, say, New York and less so than St. Louis where I was born). I have been on LACTNET for only a few days but look forward to this means of contact with a growing group of experts on breastfeeding. For 10 years I have commuted 90 minutes each way to Uppsala University (over 500 years old!) where I have a position somewhat equivalent to an assistant professor in the US, doing a bit of teaching and research in International (developing country) Nutrition, but mainly consultancy work for the Swedish International Development Authority and various UN agencies once in a while, travelling a lot to Tanzania and Zimbabwe and occasionally to Bangladesh and elsewhere (recently to Sri Lanka and Brazil). I have been on the ILCA Professional Advisory Board since its inception. My masters degree at Cornell University was based on research in St. Vincent, West Indies on the impact of infant food advertising on infant feeding patterns and on infant health. My wife, Stina Almroth, and I then did research for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization on the economics of breastfeeding in West Africa and later I did my PhD on a breastfeeding promotion program in Yemen. At the Unit for International Child Health within the Pediatric Department of the Uppsala University Medical School, we have recently formed a group of Swedish and developing country graduate students interested in breastfeeding research and are trying to simultaneously learn about key issues, what is going on in the world in breastfeeding promotion, and research methodology. The Innocenti Declaration says women should be "enabled and empowered" to ced of the importance of this aspect when I read an article and eventually the PhD dissertation by Datha Brack "Why women breast-feed: the influence of cultural values and pernatal care on choice of infant feeding methods and sucess and breast-feeding," City University of New York, 1979. The recent WHO book "Breastfeeding: the Technical Basis" identifies two areas of breastfeeding protection, support and promotion that should be relevant: mother-to-mother suppport and support to working women. Research is needed to develop "success stories" and eventually models of how ton various cultural/economic settings. This is part of what our group hopes to work on in coming years. I see the type of work lactation consultants do as a sort of hybrid, with each individual consultant having better possibilities of empowering cliets than, say, a physician has (who belongs to a professional tradition characterized by its utilization of disempowerment to its own advantage), but being more at risk of taking on a disempowering style than, say a LLL advisor. (A "Brave New World" view of what can happen when male physicians gain complete power over women's reproductive health can be seen in Brazil where 65% of deliveries are now caesarian sections --the others take place mainly in areas where the health care services do not reach. A modern, educated Brazilirightened and worried if informed that she were to be delivered naturally.) But in all cases, personal awareness of empowerment as an important issue and making an effort are no doubt what determines whether one succeeds in building or tearing down a mother's self-confidence. Ted Greiner, PhD Senior Lecturer in International Nutrition Unit for International Child Health, Entrance 11 Uppsala University 751 85 Uppsala Sweden phone +46 - 18 515198 fax +46 - 18 515380 home phone +46 - 8 191397 (can be used as fax also)