Tag: breastfeeding

Community-based doulas play an important role in helping decrease maternal and infant mortality rates and increase breastfeeding rates. These women are trained to provide peer support to other women in their communities throughout pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and early parenting.

In a joint collaboration to spread the joys of breastfeeding, Loving Moments by Leading Lady partnered with the fourth annual Black Breastfeeding Week event by donating nursing bras to participating breastfeeding organizations across the country. Black Breastfeeding Week is a week-long event Aug. 25-31 at the end of National Breastfeeding Month, which celebrates and advocates the health benefits and personal empowerment of breastfeeding.

Anita Woodley is one of the hidden treasures of Oakland’s drama community. Though she no longer lives in Oakland, Oakland very much lives in her. She has recently jumped onto the international scene with her two popular one woman plays, “Mama Juggs” and “The Men in Me.”

More African-American mothers are breastfeeding. When Dr. Young came to Howard University Hospital in 2004, only 22 percent of the mothers breastfed. Today, about 60 percent of the mothers who deliver at the hospital breastfeed, she said. “It’s improving, but for the health of babies, we need to get that number to 80 to 90 percent.”

The way we grow, distribute and prepare food should celebrate our various cultures and our shared humanity, providing not only sustenance, but justice, beauty and pleasure.