Multifaceted community approaches to child health improvement have focused on diverse issues and have demonstrated various levels of success. However, community initiatives to increase breastfeeding rates and duration involving multiple stakeholders such as providers, community NGOs, community members, public health faculty and public health students in training are rare in the literature. This presentation will provide a case study of community organizing around breastfeeding that could be used as a model to facilitate the effectiveness of initiatives in communities and to enhance the quality of public health training experiences. This initiative involved a multistage needs assessment directed by an 8-year-old community-wide coalition. The assessment included a survey of health care providers, a survey of pregnant and recently delivered mothers and an intervention development process driven by the providers and community members. Goals established by the assessment included enhancing breastfeeding utilizing the following processes: educating providers in continuing education sessions and supporting the development of provider office policies; conducting social marketing and media advocacy programs to increase awareness of breastfeeding; increasing school health education on breastfeeding; increasing the education of community NGOs; and, increasing the number of employers with breastfeeding friendly policies for their workplaces. Results of the needs assessment and progress to date will be reviewed.
Learning Objectives: 1. At the completion of the session the participants will be able to describe the processes used to develop a community-wide approach to breastfeeding enhancement. 2. At the completion of the session the participants will be able to describe how policy development initatives can facilitate increasing breastfeeding initiation and duration.
Keywords: Breastfeeding, Community Collaboration
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: East Stroudsburg University - provides in kind support to the Maternal and Child Health Coalition (space and meals for meetings)
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.