National Breastfeeding Awareness campaign to launch in August

Military Medicine, Jul 2003

During World Breastfeeding Week (1-7 August), the US Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health (OWH) in partnership with the Advertising Council of New York and the United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC) will launch a comprehensive 3-year media campaign to promote breastfeeding and implement the recommendations of the Surgeon General in the HHS Blueprint for Action on Breastfeeding (2000). Healthy People 2010 goals of increasing the proportion of mothers who breastfeed their babies in the early postpartum period to 75% and 6 months postpartum to 50% and eliminating disparities will be the overall goals of the campaign.

The National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign will include the creation and dissemination of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) for TV and radio. The Ad Council will distribute the PSAs to TV and radio stations in the top 210 media markets in the US. Partners will include community-based demonstration projects and media trained community action volunteers.

Eighteen community-based demonstration projects (CDPs) throughout the United States will work in coordination with the Office on Women's Health and the Advertising Council to implement the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign at the local level. The CDPs, which include breastfeeding coalitions, hospitals, universities, and other organizations have been funded to offer breastfeeding services, provide outreach to their communities, train healthcare providers on breastfeeding, implement the media aspects of the campaign, and track breastfeeding rates in their communities.

In addition, Breastfeeding Coalition of the Uniformed Services (BCUS/BECAUSE) members will be participating in the June one-day media training conference calls conducted by the Office on Women's Health and will receive Community Action Kits.

In addition to trying to raise initiation rates, the campaign will also stress the importance of exclusive breastfeeding for at least 6 months as recommended recently by the WHO and UNICEF:

"Breastfeeding is an unequalled way of providing ideal food for the healthy growth and development of infants; it is also an integral part of the reproductive process with important implications for the health of mothers. A review of the literature has shown that, on a population basis, exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months is the optimal way of feeding infants. To enable mothers to establish and sustain exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months, WHO and UNICEF recommend:

* Initiation of breastfeeding within the first hour of life

* Exclusive breastfeeding - that is the infant only receives breastmilk without any additional food or drink, not even water

* Breastfeeding on demand - that is as often as the child wants, day and night

* No use of bottles, treats or pacifiers."