Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Breastfeeding Week— Telling our own stories. Elevating our voices— is coming to a close.
On Friday, the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee AANHPI Caucus presented the AANHPI Lactation Community Forum, an open panel discussion where AANHPI community members shared about their journeys to becoming lactation support professionals as well as provided guidance on how we can further build community capacity to support AANHPI families.
Other opportunities as part of the celebration included visiting the Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian Breastfeeding Week Facebook page and engaging with activities like the AANHPI Coloring Pages Contest. The Alameda County’s Asian, Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander (ASAP!) Breastfeeding Taskforce AANHPI Social Media Toolkit produced shareable social media content including messages and captions in the toolkit which have been translated into 11 different AANHPI languages: Chinese (both traditional and simplified), Farsi, Hindi, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.
In an engaging discussion from last summer, Tonya Lang, MPH, CHES, IBCLC and Grace Yee, described the diversity that exists under the AANHPI umbrella, shaking away the stereotypical idea that Asian culture is monolithic.
The Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence begins to describe the complexity of AAPNHPI groupings and the forces that shape identity in Census Date & API Identities. AAPI DATA, which provides demographic data and policy research on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, compiled some wonderful visuals to help shape the numbers.
The overgeneralization of the API community has led to some misleading data about breastfeeding rates. On an aggregate level, initiation and duration rates are relatively high, but the statistics don’t account for stark disparities within these population groups. This piece covers this phenomenon in more depth and offers strategies for tailoring infant feeding support in the Chinese American population.
As Dr. Magda Peck has pointed out, numbers and data are important because they drive decisions and policies, but they also have the potential to sanitize humanity. That’s where stories come in. Not only do they humanize the numbers, they can also help us make sense of the data.
In celebration of AANHPI Week and in hopes of demonstrating the complexity and diversity of this population, we have collected several stories by and about those in the AANHPI community.
First up, is To-wen Tseng and her contributions to the San Diego County Breastfeeding Coalition’s blog. Tseng wrote most recently about her ‘why’ reflecting on National Breastfeeding Month. Read that piece here.
Joanne Datangel-Gallardo, MD, DPPS of the National Children’s Hospital, Philippines has worked extensively with relactation efforts. Read about Dr. Datangel-Gallardo’s work here.
Also out of the Philippines is a piece by Micaela Papa detailing how breastfeeding saved one baby’s life and helped her mother recover from the stress of Typhoon Odette.
Not far south from this archipelago, is the island nation of Timor Leste. Here, emergency response efforts to protect breastfeeding have saved the lives of many. Community members manage and intercept artificial baby milk and other ultra-processed food product donations among other components of the nurturing care model. Read about these efforts here.
In Indonesia, efforts are also underway to combat commercial milk formula companies. Find a simple model for reporting Code violations here.
Jenny Lei Ravelo writes about the tangle of infant feeding complexities on Indonesia’s remote islands complete with stunning photos in partnership with the 1000 Days Fund.
In India, the Foundation for Mother & Child Health (FMCH) works to empower families from vulnerable communities with actionable information and services, resulting in health seeking behavior and nutritious food choices in order to tackle maternal child malnutrition, ultimately breaking the cycle of poverty. Read about the organization’s impact here.
In the spring, the Asian Pacific Islander Breastfeeding Task Force (APIBTF) a part of Breastfeed LA, tailored the Dietary Guidelines for infants and toddlers for Chinese and Vietnamese communities, a project that augments APIBTF’s sister organization Alameda County’s Asian, Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander (ASAP!) Breastfeeding Taskforce’s Continuity of Care (CoC) Blueprint Project Prenatal Toolkit for AANHPI families. You can find out more about the efforts to center culture in health here.
Also exemplifying culture centered in health is the Hmong Breastfeeding Initiative (HBI). With funding from Reducing Disparities in Breastfeeding through Continuity of Care Identifying Care Gaps grant from National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), the Hmong Breastfeeding Coalition (HBC) conducted an environmental scan of the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minn.) on breastfeeding promotion and support for child-bearing age Hmong women and families. Read more here.
Tiffany Pao Yang has played a crucial role in this work. The daughter of Hmong refugees, she is especially invested in helping change the narrative around infant feeding in the Hmong population. Read part of her story here.
More to explore
Breastfeeding in Emergencies: The Struggles of New Mothers in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp
A Journal of Aboriginal and Indigenous Community Health: Community Influences on Breastfeeding Described by Native Hawaiian Mothers
Breastfeed LA’s Current APIBTF Projects
API Breastfeeding Task Force Video Library
The Cost of Not Breastfeeding from Alive & Thrive Downloadable PDFs for several Asian countries