Tag: community

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Honoring National Native American Heritage Month

We’re pausing our month-long series commemorating late maternal child health advocates for another important observation: National Native American Heritage Month. It’s our honor to share the work of Indigenous Full-Spectrum Doula Skaniehtiiohstha Kasokeo of A’nowa:ra Owira Doulas serving those on the borderlands of Canada and the U.S. This piece was originally published in 2021. 

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In a matrilineal society, ancestral descent is traced through maternal lines. Indigenous Full-Spectrum Doula Skaniehtiiohstha Kasokeo of A’nowa:ra Owira Doulas— serving those on the borderlands of Canada and the U.S.– points out that of the hundreds of Native American tribes across North America, many of them are matrilineal and this framework contributes to the interconnectedness of life.

Skaniehtiiohstha Kasokeo

But because of the devastation of colonization and forced assimilation, many of the birth and infant feeding traditions passed down through clans by mothers have been disturbed. Kasokeo and her colleagues are working to empower Indigenous families through birth, restoring these traditions. 

“A lot of things were taken,” Kasokeo says of the effects of colonization. “We all have bits and pieces of that big picture; we’re healing from historical trauma. We can use this time of birth to bring healing to [families].” 

She shares that an elder once told her that through the messages we tell our children, we send messages to our future. 

“I personally relate that back to the birth experience,”Kasokeo begins.“The messages we send about our bodies, our connection to each other and the strength of women, in my mind happens through breastfeeding. Especially in the first hours after birth, the first messages we relate are about our bodies and the connection to babies’ matrilineal line through breastfeeding.”

Kasokeo emphasizes that this path will look different for every person. 

“It doesn’t have to look a certain way,” she says. 

Another doula featured in Reclaiming Birthing Traditions: Indigenous Advocates Talk Maternal Health by Daisy Sprenger echoes this distinction. 

“There is a problematic tendency… to generalize within dialogues about Indigenous communities,” Sprenger writes. “It’s critical to remember that ‘Indigenous’ is a very broad term, and that each community has different practices and traditions. Within these communities …  each mother and family will have different outlooks, personal histories, and levels of comfort and desires.” 

Kasokeo and her colleagues embrace this approach with the overarching theme to give power to women, instilling in them the confidence that their bodies will help their babies to thrive.

The doulas in their group lean on one another, strengthening their collective as support people.  Kasokeo talks about how she, in part, pursued doula work in order to become what she needed.

Sign reads: “My Mom, Sisters, Aunties + Grandmas are Sacred” Photo by Dulcey Lima on Unsplash

When Kasokeo became pregnant at 19, she immediately sought out the very limited midwifery care where she was living in Saskatchewan (Treaty 6 Territory). With only 12 midwives in her entire province, she sent in her application as early as possible, but was denied due to the sheer number of parents seeking out midwifery care. 

Author Amanda Short details that “Jessica Bailey, President of the Midwives Association of Saskatchewan, said that her team of six at Saskatoon City Hospital turns away anywhere from 40 to 50 percent of people asking for care monthly. Across the province, it’s somewhere from 20 to 50 percent.” 

During this time though, she learned about doulas, connected with one in her area and says she “fell in love with everything about it.” 

As a survivor of sexual abuse, Kasokeo says it was important to her to know what procedures were going to be done to her perinatally and to be equipped with as much knowledge as possible. Having a doula by her side helped her achieve that.

Despite laboring for over 20 hours and ultimately deciding on pain medication not originally planned, Kasokeo reports having had an orgasmic birth. She says she thought, “Everybody should have this!” 

During her second birth, Kasokeo hemorrhaged and was later forced to navigate an unjust healthcare system with retained placental fragments eight weeks postpartum. 

Having endured the challenges she found herself in, Kasokeo says she sees herself as well-situated to meet other women where they’re at. 

In 2017, she and her colleagues formed A’nowa:ra Owira (Baby Turtle) Doulas serving those in Akwesasne, Canada and surrounding areas.

Akwesasne is a uniquely situated point on the map. Joshua Keating writes in The Nation That Sits Astride the U.S.-Canada Border: “This Mohawk community is home to around 13,000 people and sits astride the world’s longest border (three hours’ drive northeast of Syracuse or two hours’ travel southwest from Montreal), not quite a part of either country, but not quite independent either…The town has three different governments: one elected council recognized by Canada, one by the United States and a traditional government affiliated with the Iroquois Confederacy, of which the Mohawk are one of the six constituent nations, or tribes. All told, including the United States, Canada, the state of New York and the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, there are eight governments with some level of jurisdiction over a territory with an area of less than 40 square miles…” 

Kasokeo explains that this means not everyone has access to the same health care systems, so she and her colleagues work to fill in the voids that many families face when in need of maternal child health care. 

As the world learns to manage life amidst a pandemic, she and her group are beginning to open up more meetings and social gatherings in hopes of reaching more birthing and lactating individuals. 

Recently, Kasokeo completed the online Lactation Counselor Training Course (LCTC). 

“I loved the training!” she exclaims. The myth busting and the counseling skills were notable, and she says she appreciated the convenience of being able to simultaneously learn and stay at home with her children. 

Kasokeo admits that covering the counseling skills stalled her at times throughout the course; she says she felt guilty reflecting back on past clients and how she might have interacted with them differently and better served them.

“I needed to find the confidence in myself,” she adds. “It was really scary for me, but the course has given me the tools to be confident in my ability to become a lactation care provider. Moving forward, the number one thing will be not making assumptions and asking people to clarify things.” 

Kasokeo’s fascination with and passion for maternal child health persist, and she says she would love to network with others. She is particularly interested in learning about how to nurture a homegrown organization with limited funds. You can reach Kasokeo directly at skasokeo@anowaraowiradoulas.org  or connect with A’nowa:ra Owira Doulas here and here.

Esther nurses baby Aven. Image from ‘Visualizing change’ a piece about Andrea Mietkiewicz’s, RN, CPM, CLC and filmmaker Nicolle Littrell’s work. Read it at https://www.ourmilkyway.org/visualizing-change/
For more pieces honoring Indigenous experiences, check out:  
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Happy Asian American Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Breastfeeding Week 2024: Bridging the Gaps

National Breastfeeding Month is such a dynamic time of year on account of the weekly observances that honor unique cultures and voices within the wider realm of lactation and breastfeeding. 

This week, we celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Breastfeeding Week (August 15 to 21) with the theme Bridging the Gaps, in a call for advocacy around culturally tailored education and community-reflective lactation support. 

We’re revisiting a previous publication, as we did earlier this summer celebrating various national celebrations, in honor of AANHPI Breastfeeding Week. 

We hope you’ll enjoy this reworking of A collection of stories by and about those in the AANHPI community, which was originally published last summer. 

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The 2023 Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Breastfeeding Week Telling our own stories. Elevating our voices was rich with opportunities to engage, learn and celebrate. 

Gorgeous content from Asian, Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander (ASAP!) Breastfeeding Taskforce’s Social Media Toolkit 2023

As part of the observance, 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.

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.

It’s also become tradition to host the AANHPI Coloring Pages Contest. 

In an engaging discussion with Tonya Lang, MPH, CHES, IBCLC and Grace Yee in 2022, they 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.

More gorgeous content from Asian, Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander (ASAP!) Breastfeeding Taskforce’s Social Media Toolkit 2023

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 an effort to demonstrate 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.

And another beautiful collection from Asian, Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander (ASAP!) Breastfeeding Taskforce’s Social Media Toolkit 2023

In Spring 2023, 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

  • Professionals who identify as AANHPI or work PRIMARILY with AANHPI communities in birthing or lactation, are invited to complete a 10 minute nationwide survey and share it with colleagues.

The AANHPI Lactation Collaborative seeks to compile and create a resource directory to share publicly on their website. Your answers will also help inform future projects focused on increasing access to lactation support and resources for AANHPI birthing people.

If you have completed this survey in the past, please only retake it if you need to update your responses.

Responses are confidential other than information voluntarily provided for the AANHPI resource directory.

To take the survey, go to: https://tinyurl.com/AANHPICollabSurvey

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Celebrating World Refugee Day

This summer, we are revisiting some of our previous publications as they relate to various celebrations. World Refugee Day was honored on June 20 this year. As such, we are resharing our 2019 piece “Initiative empowers refugee and migrant women”.

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Before Florence Ackey, MSW knew what public health was, she was inquisitive about prevention. Having lost her 12 year old cousin during her young childhood, she found herself perpetually asking “How can I make things better?”

A lifelong investigator and learner, Ackey completed two years of law school in her home country Niger followed by completion of the University of South Florida Master’s of social work. She is currently pursuing a second master’s degree and will begin her doctorate in public health in fall 2019. She recently completed the Lactation Counselor Training Course (LCTC).

Ackey serves as the State Refugee Health Coordinator for the Florida Department of Health Immunization, and Refugee Services. In this position, she connected with a woman who would inspire her to found Refugee and Migrant Women’s Initiative (RAMWI), a not for profit 501(c)(3) which serves and empowers refugee and migrant women during their resettlement.

This particular woman would come to Ackey’s office almost every day and sometimes simply sit with her. Despite a language barrier, Ackey eventually learned that the woman was lonely and depressed; she couldn’t have children, and her husband was out of work.

These circumstances caused great strife, but connecting with Ackey uplifted her spirit.

Mindful of her mental health, Ackey helped cultivate a social circle around this woman. At the same time, Ackey was driven to incorporate a practical component to the gatherings,  so she taught the women to crochet.

“We made a lot of scarves,” she remembers. “We sold them and [the woman] was able to raise enough money to pay for two months rent. It changed her confidence.”

Ultimately, their informal, weekend meetings grew too large for home meetings, so RAMWI was created. Today RAMWI, run entirely by volunteers, has served over 400 families over roughly six years.

“It’s just beautiful to see how far we’ve come,” Ackey says.

Refugee and migrant women suffer from things like trauma, discrimination and anxiety.

Ackey explains: Often the story goes that the woman arrives with her husband and children from their home country; the husband finds work and grows a social life and the children go to school and make friends. In the meantime, the woman is left alone at home, sometimes too uneasy about the unfamiliarity of their new settlement to leave the confines of her home. Even when her family returns from their daily routines, she’s further isolated because their experiences become less and less common and relatable.

In light of this phenomenon, RAMWI offers corresponding, age-appropriate workshops for mothers and children in order to bridge conversation topics.

“The mom is no longer left alone; she has something she can contribute,” Ackey explains.

RAMWI offers its social, support network and classes and workshopsin a way that allows women to integrate into their new communities while still preserving their cultural identity. For instance, RAMWI’s Annual International Fashion Show during Welcoming Week offers refugees and migrant women the opportunity to share pride in their culture through clothing.

Participants pose during the Annual International Fashion Show during Welcoming Week
Photo courtesy of RAMWI

The show usually represents about 48 countries with over 80 participants.

Monthly support groups cover topics like women’s health, grief and coping mechanism, U.S. healthcare system and resources, nutrition, safety, domestic violence, disaster preparedness, life balance and personal finances among other topics.

Ackey emphasizes that female empowerment doesn’t need to be granted externally.

“Women have the power within in them to freely give,” she begins.

She goes on to describe a visual installation she’ll present at an upcoming RAMWI session to illustrate this idea.

Ackey asks participants questions like ‘Have you helped someone without anything in return?’ or ‘Have you paid a genuine compliment to someone?’ Each time a participant answers ‘yes’, she pokes a hole with a thumbtack into a blank board. The holes initially appear to be randomly placed, but when a light shines through the back of the board, the silhouette of a decorated city appears. The installation represents the seemingly small acts of women impacting entire communities.

This month, RAMWI members will assemble 240 care packages for the homeless.

RAMWI participants at a monthly meeting
Photo courtesy of RAMWI

When it comes to infant feeding, migrant women often look to formula as a status symbol. It’s a mindset Ackey encounters often, but she says the lactation counselor training course has equipped her to become a better healthy infant feeding advocate.

Ackey has also found that hospital staff generally do not take the time to discuss and educate migrant women about breastfeeding. She predicts this is sometimes due to language barriers.

“It’s easier to give them formula and go,” she explains.

Mothers are often happy with the “gift” of formula and all of the “swag” that can come along with formula feeding.

Surely birth and infant feeding culture varies greatly among the women in RAMWI, but Ackey has found that immigrant women tend to share the common value of a strong mother -child bond which stems from their collective upbringing, she explains.

Mother and child, one of Ackey’s favorite photos
Photo courtesy of RAMWI

She shares that this “it takes a village” mentality is reflected in the way they feed their babies.

“Women take care of all the children,” says Ackey.

In some cases, women breastfeed children that are not biologically their own in the spirit of shared duties, but for survival in other circumstances.

“Women breastfeed other children especially from some African countries,” Ackey begins.

She recalls one woman who adopted a child she picked up on the road next to the dead body of his mother. Ackey makes clear this imagery isn’t representative of the entire refugee population, but it is a story that embodies how the women she works with will raise any child.

Amidst the tragedy and hardship that many of the families have faced, there’s so much beauty and hope within RAMWI.

“Hope can, and will heal the world,” its mantra.

One volunteer said:  “The thing I love the most is the environment of support and empowerment that RAMWI creates for women from all over the world…the women learn from each other…form a bond that as women is something that connects you no matter where you are from.”

For Ackey, success is achieved when a woman makes a choice because she has been fully informed and she’s aware of all of her options.

Visit https://www.ramwi.org/ for more information. Connect with RAMWI on Facebook here.

Other relevant pieces

Prioritizing infant and young child feeding in emergencies during National Preparedness Month and beyond

To know is to do: retired nurse dedicates time to humanitarian aid in East Africa bringing awareness to the paradox of direness and vibrancy

A collection of stories by and about those in the AANHPI community

Caesarean Doulas: Implications for Breastfeeding at 24th Annual International Breastfeeding Conference & Nutrition and Nurture in Infancy and Childhood: Bio-Cultural Perspectives

Breastfeeding, peace and justice

Babywearing as a public health initiative

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Where are they now? Lessons from ruins with Carin Richter RN, MSN, APN-BC, IBCLC, CCBE

Photo by Aykut Eke on Unsplash

The peafowl is a bird known for attracting attention. Whether flaunting their colorful, unfurled plumage or delivering a resounding cry, peafowl are undoubtedly expressive, insistent creatures.

Occasionally, when Healthy Children Project’s Carin Richter, RN, MSN, APN-BC, IBCLC, CCBE hosts Lactation Counselor Training Course (LCTC) competencies from her Florida home, a curious peacock will poke its head into the frame of the video call demanding attention from her and the participants. 

“The big inquisitive bird insists on being part of the session on breastfeeding!” Richter exclaims.  

Since we featured her last, Richter has fully retired from her responsibilities at St. Anthony’s Medical Center in Rockford, Ill. and now helps facilitate the online LCTC once a week.

Our Milky Way caught up with Richter this winter as part of our Where are they now? series. 

Now 70 years old, Richter shares with a stirring of anger, worry and dismay in her tone: “Women’s health… We are in crisis mode. I’m personally struggling with any kind of optimism.”

She cites a few culprits: a political climate that tolerates division and disrespect, the marginalization of maternal child health issues, and the stripping of rights as marked by the reversal of Roe v. Wade. 

From these ruins, Richter has constructed several lessons. For one, she implores us to become politically involved. 

“Keep women’s issues right smack dab in the conversation,” she advises. “Look around. Search out areas where you can sit at that decision making table.” 

Political involvement, Richter suggests, can come in the form of participating on a shared governance board, community advisory boards, church councils, and rotary clubs. Engagement doesn’t need to look like shaking hands with the mayor. 

She continues, “My friends always say, ‘Oh Carin, you never have one conversation without the word breast coming through.’ We need to live that! Because if we don’t we’re going to lose what we have.”

Photo by Nicole Arango Lang on Unsplash

In other words, be a peafowl. Demand attention. 

Richter lays out what happens when we don’t. 

During her nursing career, Richter and her colleagues’ involvement with the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) eventually gave rise to seven hospitals in her area being designated by 2013. As of 2022, only one of those hospitals had retained their designation. 

“Because there was no one sitting at the decision making table speaking for the initiative,  administration lost sight of it and breastfeeding took a back seat or perhaps didn’t have a seat at all,” Richter reflects. “No one spoke of keeping breastfeeding issues in the forefront. It’s an experience that brings me to tears.”

Another insight she’s gained is the difficulty in beginning and sustaining a community-based lactation business. She watched friends with solid business plans, well-researched proposals, and passionate ambitions to help dyads get crushed by lack of insurance reimbursement, lack of mentorship and lack of collaboration.

“We need a lot of work on that front,” Richter comments. 

She suggests a reimagination of the way lactation services are viewed where insurances and companies recognize the importance of breastfeeding and elevate lactation support to a professional state. 

For instance, while working at the hospital, Richter brainstormed ways to give value to and justify the services of in-house lactation care providers. She found that postpartum breastfeeding support offered in-hospital  resulted in a marked increase in patient satisfaction scores. A creative solution suggested that  initial lactation and breast care be embedded in the room rate available for all patients, not billed as a separate line item, allowing for a higher reimbursement rate, Richter explains.  

Photo by Hannah Barata: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-having-skin-to-skin-contact-with-her-newborn-baby-19782322/

After retirement from the clinical setting, Richter cared for her aging parents. She says she felt the pinch many women of today experience as they juggle personal, familial and work responsibilities.

As she lived the struggle to find workable solutions for the care of her elder parents, she says she was surprised to find that barriers were similar to those she encountered while working for change in the community surrounding breastfeeding. For both, breastfeeding and elder care, resources are often limited, frequently expensive, and often inaccessible or unavailable.

Her focus now has broadened from maternal child health advocacy to the broader realm of family care issues. She finds herself
advocating for maternal child health and family care issues like pay equity and affordable child care.

“The struggle continues across the continuum, in arenas frequently dominated by women who bear the majority of responsibility,” Richter reflects. 

Despite a sometimes discouraging climate, Richter says she sees “little bright spots” here and there. 

“Not a week goes by that I don’t have a [medical professional] seeking lactation credentialing… I am thrilled with this,” she begins.  The practitioners seeking lactation credentials are not only specializing in women’s health; instead they’re an interdisciplinary group of folks, a sign that breastfeeding and lactation care is breaking free from siloed confines.  

“This is what keeps me excited,” Richter says. “More knowledgeable, eager voices speaking for mothers and babies.” 

Looking back, Richter remembers when it caused a fight to require lactation credentialing for OB nurses. 

“We got so much backlash not only from administration but from OB nurses themselves,”  Richter recounts. “Some OB nurses took no ownership of lactation. ‘That’s the lactation counselors’ job,’ they would claim.”

In this culture, Richter pointed out that trauma nurses are required to be trauma certified, oncology nurses  are required to be oncology certified; why were OB nurses not required to be certified in lactation when it’s such a large portion of their work?

“It was a bit of an eye opener,” Richter says. 

Retrieved from ALPP. Used with permission.

Now almost all hospital OB nurses need to be certified within the first one to two years of hire, and Richter says she’s encouraged by the ever-increasing number of OB nurses she speaks with weekly who are seeking breastfeeding certification and are supported by their department managers.

As for physicians certified in lactation, an already developed template existed. The state of Illinois had issued a Perinatal state wide initiative to mandate that all anesthesiologists caring  for pregnant patients were to be certified in Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP). All obstetricians soon followed. Richter says her wish would be that the template could extend to mandating lactation credentials to all professionals caring for pregnant and breastfeeding families.

Another bright spot Richter’s noticed are the larger, private sector industry and private employers in the Midwest offering adequate workplace lactation accommodations and services  that go beyond what is mandated by law. 

Moreover, Richter continues to be  impressed by the work that the United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC) is doing, namely increasing momentum for workplace protections across the nation.

Though she adds, “The spirit is really strong, but the body is really weak. Getting the body to make the decisions and the policies is difficult.” 

Retrieved from ALPP. Used with permission.

Yet another area of encouragement is the inroad made into the recognition of perinatal mood disorders (PMD). Acknowledging that there is always room for improvement, Richter extols the improvements in detection, treatment and the lightened stigma around PMDs.  

Richter shares on a final note that while maternal child health issues have been largely well promoted and mostly supported in the last decade, she hopes to see more emphasis and energy put into the protection leg of the triad. That will require involvement in the work of policy change at the institution, community, state and national level. Policy development and change is the first stepping stone, she advises. 

“Do not be afraid of policies, because policies have power,” Richter states.  “Get involved and find your place at the decision making table.That’s your homework assignment for the year!” 



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Where are they now? An update from Nicole Bridges PhD, B Comm (Hons), SFHEA, MPRIA

Then

Amidst trolls who lurk, misinformation that muddies, and insidious marketing,  Nicole Bridges’s PhD, B Comm (Hons), SFHEA, MPRIA (she/her) work illuminates the helpful spaces on the internet. Almost a decade ago, her publication The faces of breastfeeding support: experiences of mothers seeking breastfeeding support online, found that “social networking sites (SNSs) provide support from the trusted community” that is “immediate…practical and valuable…”

In our 2017 coverage, Dr. Bridges pointed out how social media can compliment face-to-face interaction between breastfeeding dyads and lactation care providers, how it can offer moms “access to the collective wisdom of the whole tribe” as opposed to the perspective of one lactation professional, and how it can facilitate social interaction offline.

and now.

Dr. Bridges now serves as the Director of Academic Program for Communication, Creative Industries and Screen Media and is a Senior Lecturer in Public Relations in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. For over two decades, she has been a volunteer breastfeeding counselor with the Australian Breastfeeding Association.

We’re pleased to have caught up with Dr. Bridges as she reflects on the past and future.

Q: What is the most significant change you’ve noticed in maternal child health in the last decade?

A: The increased use and evolution of social media tools to support breastfeeding. The COVID-19 pandemic amplified this and demonstrated how useful social media and online communities can be to supporting families in times of need.

Q: What is the most helpful/profound lesson you have learned about maternal child health in the last decade?

A: That (unfortunately) there is still so much more work to be done and that volunteer peer support organisations like the Australian Breastfeeding Association are needed more than ever before.

Q: Is there a current project, organization, initiative, endeavor or trend in lactation and breastfeeding that excites you most?

A: It will be interesting to see how the introduction and evolution of AI tools can be used to support breastfeeding into the future.

Q: What’s your best piece of advice for the next generation of maternal child health advocates?

A: Always place the parents and children at the centre of everything you do.

Q: Where do you envision yourself in the next 10 years?

A: I do hope that I am still a volunteer peer counsellor 10 years from now and that I can still continue to support breastfeeding families in this role and as a researcher in this area.

Check out Dr. Bridges’ publications since her work was last featured on Our Milky Way:

  • Rowbotham, S., Marks, L., Tawia, S., Woolley, E., Rooney, J., Kiggins, E., Healey, D., Wardle, K., Campbell, V., Bridges, N. and Hawe, P. (2022), ‘Using citizen science to engage the public in monitoring workplace breastfeeding support in Australia’, Health Promotion Journal of Australia, vol 33, no 1 , pp 151 – 161.

  • Bridges, N., Howell, G. and Schmied, V. (2019), ‘Creating online communities to build positive relationships and increase engagement in not-for-profit organisations’, Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal, vol 20 .

  • Bridges, N., Howell, G. and Schmied, V. (2018), ‘Breastfeeding peer support on social networking sites’, Breastfeeding Review, vol 26, no 2 , pp 17 – 27.

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