Male Breastfeeding Support: A Video
This video was presented by Dr. Yvonne Bronner at the 2012 Breastfeeding Summit: Reclaiming an African American Tradition. The video depicts the male perspective on breastfeeding, and educates men about breastfeeding in a culturally competent form.
Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere (ROSE), Inc. seeks to enhance, encourage, support, promote, and protect breastfeeding throughout the USA, by working to reduce the breastfeeding disparities among African American women, and to strengthen the health of their babies and families through, mentoring, training, breastfeeding support groups, social support, outreach, education, legislation, health policies, and social marketing.
Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere (ROSE), Inc.) was founded in July 2011 by three Atlanta-based women who have worked in the field of maternal and child health (MCH) for the past twenty-five years. As working mothers they experienced how worksites left women to feed their babies in locations where employees would not think to eat their lunch, including bathrooms, basements and storage rooms. From her early clinical training in a hospital maternity unit to work as a nurse practitioner, Kimarie Bugg, MSN, FNP-BC, MPH, CLC, observed how the prenatal healthcare system not only failed to teach and encourage breastfeeding, but often impeded it. Since its founding, ROSE has grown to a network that includes physicians, nurses, nutritionist, social workers, peer counselors and parents.
In August 2012 when ROSE received its 501©3 nonprofit status from the Internal Revenue Service, it began with a mission to enhance the overall mental, spiritual and physical health of African American women, babies and their families by working collaboratively to encourage, promote, support and protect breastfeeding throughout the United States by training healthcare providers on culturally effective techniques. Its primary goal was to increase the percentage of African-American women breastfeed and thereby reach the target breastfeeding goal outlined in Healthy People 2020.
ROSE currently provides outreach, education and technical assistance to prenatal care providers and delivery centers to encourage them to adopt practices that support breastfeeding in their policies. Interventions may be as simple as recommending lactation volunteers to work on their maternity wards, or as involved as helping administrators to train staff or develop policies for breastfeeding support.
ROSE’s founders were in the forefront of achieving these hard-won gains and its growing network so that it is best-positioned to fulfill its newly defined mission. In order to achieve the 81% increase of African-American women who breastfeed by 2020, there will need to be nationally-focused programs that involve a range of stakeholders: breastfeeding women, individuals, family, health providers and community and public policymakers.
You can also see the group ROBE, Reaching Our Brothers Everywhere.
RACIAL EQUTY RESOURCES
Intersection of Breastfeeding & Racial Equity:
- Breastfeeding in Color: The Journey to Deep & Radical Community Support
- Breastfeeding Moms’ Voices Across America: A Conversation (webinar, log in required)
- Great Lakes Breastfeeding Webinar Series (equity-focused breastfeeding education)
- Narrowing the Great Divide: Reducing Barriers to Entry for POC in the Field of Lactation
- “Progress in increasing breastfeeding and reducing racial/ethnic differences – United States, 2000-2008 Births”
- Racial Equity Learning Community, U.S. Breastfeeding Committee (USBC) – webinars, reading list, blog posts, etc.
- “Removing Barriers to Breastfeeding: A Structural Race Analysis for First Food”, by the Center for Social Inclusion
- “Speak Up”, Comments from KBC 2018 Breastfeeding Conference presentation by Shannon McKenney Shubert
- “SPEAK UP for Black Women”, Debra Bingham, DrPH, RN, FAAN
- “Using Your Power & Privilege” – Great Lakes Breastfeeding Webinar
Black Communities:
- Black Breastfeeding after a History of Trauma
- Black Breastfeeding: Making HERstory (photo album)
- Chocolate Milk Documentary
- Is Slavery Why Black Women Aren’t Breastfeeding?, by Kimberly Seals Allers
- “Logic Model for the Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding for Black Families”, by Black Mothers Breastfeeding Association
- “Q & A with Sherry Payne: An Innovator In Lactation Equity” – comment section very important
- “Top Five Reasons We Need A Black Breastfeeding Week”, by Kimberly Seals Allers
Black Breastfeeding Organizations: