Increase proportion of Healthy Start child participants whose parent/caregiver reports they were breastfed or fed breast milk at 6 months to 61%.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusively breastfeeding for the first six months because breastfeeding is good for both the baby’s and the mother’s health. Benefits for the baby include decreased diarrheal illness, gastroenteritis, and respiratory tract infections, fewer allergies, and reduced risk of obesity and diabetes. Benefits for the mother include decreased obesity and Type II diabetes, reduced risk of breast cancer, and decreased postpartum depression.
A Performance Measure Resource Sheet is available summarizing recommended strategies and a selection of resources and evidence-based practices related to this benchmark to aid Healthy Start grantee organizations, partners and their staff in supporting the women and families they serve.
Outlines evidence-based assessment and intervention parameters designed to assist health care providers who care for breastfeeding mothers and their infants, women who are considering breastfeeding or those who are planning to breastfeed. Objectives: provide information necessary to promote breastfeeding, assess and evaluate factors that influence breastfeeding rates, and provide care and education during the preconception, prenatal, and postpartum periods aimed at facilitating a successful breastfeeding experience for mothers.
On November 16-18, 2015, all Healthy Start grantees attended the 2015 Healthy Start Convention: Achieving Measurable Outcomes that Make a Difference for Women, Families, and Communities in Washington, DC.
The purpose of the Convention was to convene the Healthy Start grantee community to build momentum, garner synergy, and propel the Healthy Start initiative towards greater success in improving perinatal health outcomes by sharing best practices, building skills, and increasing knowledge for providing high-quality services to women and their families.
Materials from the Convention are available below.
The Community-Based Doula Program connects underserved pregnant women to other women in their communities who are specially trained as doulas to provide support during the critical times of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum/early parenting. The program is based on the power of peer-to-peer support. Because doulas are of and from the same community as their clients, they are able to understand language and cultural needs and create long-term links to support networks. Women in the program have been shown to have higher breastfeeding rates, lower C-section rates, and more positive mother-infant interaction. HealthConnect One can assist in developing these programs.
This Doula Program, targeted to low income pregnant women, provides free perinatal services, including community-based childbirth education classes, labor and delivery support, postpartum care, and instruction focusing on mom/baby attachment, extension of breastfeeding duration, and interconception care. Participants in the program have been shown to have a decreased infant mortality rate, reduced need for medical interventions during labor and delivery, and longer duration of breastfeeding their infants.
This webinar will provide an overview of the HUG Your Baby Program. It will also cover teaching strategies for boosting parent confidence, facilitating the parent-child relationship and promoting breastfeeding duration supported by literature. Opportunities to receive training and resources on the HUG Your Baby program will be shared.
Following this webinar, participants will be able to:
Provide an overview of the HUG Your Baby Program and how it can support Healthy Start grantees support parents in their programs
Find more information about HUG Your baby Training and resources
Guide to breastfeeding interventions that have been reviewed by the Cochrane Collaboration and published through the Cochrane Library, a comprehensive collection of up-to-date information on the effects of health care interventions.
This document provides guidance for public health professionals and others on how to select strategies to support breastfeeding mothers and increase breastfeeding rates. It offers the most relevant information on each type of strategy. Includes information that may be important to keep in mind during the planning, implementation, or evaluation phases of a strategy. Identifies specific activities for each strategy that public health professionals can take to implement strategies in specific settings, including communities, schools, child care facilities, work sites, and medical care facilities. Includes examples of programs that use the strategy as a way to support and increase breastfeeding.
Nationally recognized, research-based, practice-informed curriculum used by many home visiting models to meet their program goals including improving birth outcomes, reducing rates of child abuse, strengthening families, enhancing child health and developmental outcomes, and promoting family stability and economic self-sufficiency. The curriculum addresses issues of child health and development within the context of the multifaceted needs of expectant and parenting families. Five-volume book series for different stages in pregnancy/parenthood, accompanied by a set of handouts for the home visitor to use when planning visits. Handouts for families can be purchased in English or Spanish and help the home visitor introduce subjects that may otherwise be difficult to talk about.
The Touchpoints approach offers healthcare providers and early education professionals a framework to build better partnerships with families around mutual strengths-based caregiving and parent engagement, all of which benefit child outcomes. Rooted in child social, emotional and behavioral development, Touchpoints seeks to improve parent-provider relationships, improve provider relationships with each other, enhance parent-infant relationships, moderate parental stress, normalize parent’s perceptions of their child’s behavior, increase well-child care adherence, improve infant developmental outcomes, improve maternal mental health indicators, and encourage longer breastfeeding. A variety of professional tools, training activities and learning communities are offered for providers.
The Ten Steps are the broad framework that guide the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative. They were developed by a team of global experts and consist of evidence-based practices that have been shown to increase breastfeeding initiation and duration. Baby-Friendly® hospitals and birthing facilities must adhere to the Ten Steps to receive, and retain, a Baby-Friendly designation. This webpage lists the Ten Steps and the endorsing organizations and links to supporting resources for both hospitals and parents.
