The Key to Increasing Breastfeeding Duration: Empowering the Healthcare Team
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- February 27, 2019
- Creator
-
Spiegel, Kathryn A.
- Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Public Health Leadership Program
- Abstract
- Experts and scientists agree that human milk is the best nutrition for human babies, but are healthcare professionals (HCPs) seizing the opportunity to promote, protect, and support breastfeeding? Not only are HCPs influential to the breastfeeding dyad, they hold a responsibility to perform evidence-based interventions to lengthen the duration of breastfeeding due to the extensive health benefits for mother and baby. This paper examines current HCPs‘ education, practices, attitudes, and extraneous factors to surface any potential contributing factors that shed light on necessary actions. Recommendations to empower HCPs to provide consistent, evidence-based care for the breastfeeding dyad include: standardized curriculum in medical/nursing school, continued education for maternity and non-maternity settings, emphasis on skin-to-skin, enforcement of evidence-based policies, implementation of "Baby-Friendly USA" interventions, and development of peer support networks. Requisite resources such as lactation consultants as well as appropriate medication and breastfeeding clinical management references aid HCPs in providing best practices to increase breastfeeding duration.
- Date of publication
- May 2009
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- Track: HC&P
- Paper type: Research or research design
- Advisor
- Harlan, Christina
- Reviewer
- Grimley, Marisha
- Degree
- Master of Public Health
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Graduation year
- 2009
- Language
- Deposit record
- b6f6bdeb-f0b9-4907-a2ad-769b5d2e1080
Relations
- Parents:
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