N.C. is striving to become Baby-Friendly through Carolina Breastfeeding Institute

The Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute received a grant of $530,700 from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina on Tuesday to help the institution promote safe breastfeeding and education services. 

CGBI works to educate and draw support for breastfeeding as a natural and healthy way for women to nurse their children. As the first public health breastfeeding center of its kind, CGBI plans to use the grant to help 61 hospitals in North Carolina become Baby-Friendly.

Baby-Friendly USA is a global program that aims to implement the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding and the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, two specific frameworks that hospitals must abide by in order to obtain the Baby-Friendly designation. 

“Baby-Friendly was created by the World Health Organization and UNICEF,” said Catherine Sullivan, director of CGBI. “The goal was to promote safe maternity care practices (in birthing facilities) that would enable breastfeeding if the mother were to choose to breastfeed. It also protects other mothers who choose to formula feed around safe handling of formula.”

Research shows breastfeeding has many benefits for both mothers and children.

“Babies that are not breastfed have a higher risk of different conditions: upper respiratory infections, diabetes, certain childhood cancers. They actually have a higher risk of dying from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome if they are not breastfed,” said Sullivan. 

“For mothers, the benefits are protection against breast and ovarian cancers. It also helps with blood pressure and heart disease, so women who breastfeed have less risk of having a heart attack later in life.”

CGBI was created in response to certain barriers against breastfeeding, such as the changing society and lack of a paid family leave, Sullivan said. 

“Not being able to break down those barriers, domestically and globally, was the driving force to have an institute that was dedicated to the implementation of programming that would help lift those barriers,” Sullivan said. 

Along with breastfeeding, Baby-Friendly USA encourages healthy birthing practices.

“Some of the in-hospital practices are that babies go skin-to-skin with their mothers immediately after birth,” said Sullivan. “It helps that baby’s blood pressure, temperature and heart rate. Everything gets into sync with being outside of the uterus. It helps stabilize them medically and then it also helps that initiation of breastfeeding if they are close to their mom immediately after birth.”

Baby-Friendly USA also links mothers to support groups or breastfeeding specialists in the community after they are discharged from the hospital. 

“This wonderful investment that Blue Cross and Blue Shield has made is really showing the value of practices in the hospitals because they are investing in this process of the hospital going into this journey and starting the Baby-Friendly process,” Sullivan said.

The grant also helps hospitals in rural areas pay their initial designation fees.

“In rural areas that have smaller hospitals, they have smaller budgets so they might not have the ability to pay for the designation fee, and so this is a beautiful thing so we can help them through the process,” said Sullivan.

CGBI acts as a "technical assistance provider," helping hospitals understand the guidelines and framework to be Baby-Friendly.

“We are already working with hospitals all over North Carolina in regard to starting that Baby-Friendly journey,” Sullivan said.

CGBI also focuses on the educating and training of lactation consultants on breastfeeding, birth spacing and birth practices. This program is the first accredited training program in the country. 

“It is a one-year program where you get all of the clinical hours and class requirements in order to become a board-certified lactation consultant,” said Ariana Stewart, a student in this program and a second-year master's student in the Gillings School of Global Public Health. “This program allows public health professionals and people outside of the traditional medical context to get this extra training and help families.” 

Along with training lactation consultants, other local services include educational programs on breastfeeding, friendly childcare and prenatal care offered to the community. 

“That's what CGBI works on, helping with policy," said Stewart. "Less on targeting and blaming moms, and more about how do we support moms who want to do it and hopefully over time, more and more moms will."

With all of programs and services offered by both CGBI and Baby-Friendly USA, Sullivan said there is one underlying goal.

“We are trying to make sure that our youngest and most vulnerable citizens have the best start in life,” she said.

@LindzBanks

university@dailytarheel.com