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

Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Breastfeeding WeekTelling 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.

Photo by Samrat Khadka on Unsplash

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.

Photo by Dragon Pan on Unsplash

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.

Elisabeth Millay/BreastfeedLA and API Breastfeeding Task Force

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

AANHPI Lactation Collab 

The Cost of Not Breastfeeding from Alive & Thrive Downloadable PDFs for several Asian countries

Foundation for Mother & Child Health (FMCH) India tackles maternal child malnutrition by empowering women

Tomorrow is Diwali, a five-day festival that celebrates the victory of light over darkness. 

The Foundation for Mother & Child Health (FMCH) India reported that almost eight lakh (hundred thousand) children in India are not able to celebrate their first Diwali due to poor nutrition and health outcomes. 

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. 

“FMCH India’s work empowers women – it gives confidence and encouragement to an FMCH field officer, adds to the skills and knowledge of a government frontline worker, and builds agency and support for mothers in the community,” Shruthi Iyer, CEO and Co-founder, FMCH India tells Our Milky Way

When Our Milky Way first interviewed FMCH in 2018, the organization had reached 10,000 women and children in Mumbai and Thane districts of Maharashtra. To date, FMCH has now worked with 60,000 families across low income neighborhoods of Mumbai.  

Still, in 2020, more than 40 percent of children in India were undernourished and 50 percent of women were anemic. 

Community engagement event
Photo credit: FMCH

Within the first 1,000 Days, FMCH strives to implement education sessions in the community, home based counseling, and the strengthening of systems, each strategy with a strong emphasis on monitoring and maintenance of  quality. Sustainability has been built into the program through community engagement and government systems. 

Because malnutrition and maternal health are complex forces, FMCH engages in a variety of programs. Read in detail about them here

For instance, as part of Project Poshan, the organization identified that in Mumbai, “only 53 percent of newborns are breastfed within one hour of birth, displaying a serious lack of early initiation of breastfeeding. On the other hand, the percentage of breastfed children aged 6 to 23 months receiving an adequate diet is as low as 6.4 percent in the city.” [ Retrieved from https://www.fmch-india.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FMCH-Annual-Report-2021-Interactive.pdf

Most recently, in the last year, FMCH “worked with close to 25,000 families, and recorded an increase in early initiation of breastfeeding – 74% from 59%… The national average is 57%,” documented in the latest Annual Report. What’s more, 70 percent of mothers started complementary feeding at the appropriate age of six months.

Photo by Ganta Srinivas

Their work supporting healthy infant feeding recognizes that breastfeeding is not only the responsibility of the mother though and aims to educate the network of people around the breastfeeding dyad

FMCH’s most recent annual report describes the success stories of health care providers and the families they serve. Explore them here

Iyer says the way forward is to establish more direct interventions, build out indicators for their theory of change and to conduct more trainings for Anganwadi workers. (Anganwadis are rural child care centers started by the Indian government as part of the Integrated Child Development Services program.)

Photo by Gene Brutty

In the earliest Indian literature, the Vedas (a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India) recognize the life-giving powers of breastmilk. 

As documented in The Religious and Cultural Bases for Breastfeeding Practices Among the Hindus “…Milk and breast are symbolic of longevity and nectarine sweetness” and “‘Drinking of the milk, whose sap is the sap of immortal life divine, may your baby gain long life, as do the gods by feeding on the beverage of immortality!’ (Susruta, III, 10).” 

Extolling breastmilk in modern India and globally, through programs like FMCH, is like the light over darkness during Diwali, the FMCH vision achieved: “Healthy mothers and thriving children for a world of unlimited possibilities.”