Barnes-Jewish Hospital partners with clinic to improve local breast-feeding rates
Posted By: Mary Williams 
Date Posted: December 20th, 2011 Category: Health Care
The bonding of a mother and her baby makes the breast-feeding experience special for many mothers. Because of the countless health benefits associated with breast-feeding, new mothers at Barnes-Jewish Hospital are encouraged to learn about nursing immediately after giving birth. To support this endeavor, Barnes-Jewish Hospital started a breast-feeding task force.
A team of lactation nurses within women and infants services at Barnes-Jewish was forming a task force around the same time that the Grace Hill Health Center’s Women, Infants and Children (WIC) received a breast-feeding education grant. Leaders within the lactation teams from both organizations decided to join forces to see how the two could positively affect breast-feeding rates, both within the hospital’s patient population, and throughout the community.
Janaea Stephenson and her healthy 8-month-old baby girl, Jamiah. Photo by Mary Williams
“The team helps empower families to initiate breast-feeding within the first moments of life, and then to help families to integrate breast-feeding into their lives,” says Carolyn Mank, RN, IBCLC, a founding member of the task force.
Using money from the grant, the Grace Hill WIC peer counselors participate in educating the Barnes-Jewish Hospital nursing staff on the community’s needs.
“This partnership is designed to help the community using the best evidence and our education techniques to empower women to breast-feed, no matter what obstacles they may face,” Carol Scott, director of women and infant services, says. “With such a diverse patient population, and so many cultural obstacles to sustaining breast-feeding, a task force is truly needed to ensure we are giving mothers every possible means of guidance and support in learning and continuing to breast-feed.”
Janaea Stephenson, a patient at Grace Hill Health Centers, recently delivered at Barnes-Jewish and says she was thankful to learn how to breast-feed her baby girl, Jamiah.
“After I gave birth, a nurse from the task force taught me different techniques on how to breast-feed,” Stephenson says. “The nurse showed me various positions that would make breast-feeding more comfortable and helped me bond with
Jamiah through this process. And, Jamiah hasn’t been sick or had any health problems since I started breast-feeding her.”
The task force also helps devise related hospital practice and serves as embedded breast-feeding educators, keeping the labor and delivery, postpartum, Well-Baby Nursery, Special Care Nursery and NICU staff up-to-date on the latest education. In addition to the lactation team, other members of women and infants services have gained breast-feeding certification since the founding of the task force.
This educational intervention aligns with the U.S. Health and Human Services Blueprint for Action on breast-feeding goals that were announced by the Surgeon General in October 2010.