Breastfeeding: Strategies and Resources

Program Highlights

• CDC Study Describes the Hawaii State Health Department’s Role in Supporting Breastfeeding [PDF-561KB]
  This fact sheet outlines key activities and findings from the Baby-Friendly Hawaii Project. CDC grantees and breastfeeding practitioners can use this document to inform future planning at the state and federal levels on approaches that improve breastfeeding through maternity care practices.
• Washington Hospitals and Birthing Centers Certified Breastfeeding Friendly [PDF-345KB]
• New York: An online training course boosts hospital-based promotion of breastfeeding [PDF–1MB]
  This initiative used an online training course to support hospital efforts to increase exclusive breastfeeding rates among new mothers.
• Maternity Care Practices [PDF–187KB]
  Maternity care practices related to breastfeeding take place during the intra-partum hospital stay, which includes immediate prenatal care, care during labor and birthing, and postpartum care.

Intervention Examples

• Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative [PDF–200KB]
  This initiative at Boston Medical Center was designed to implement hospital policies and procedures that support optimal breastfeeding practices.
• The Connecticut Breastfeeding Initiative [PDF–200KB]
  This initiative was designed to promote practices in maternity facilities that support the initiation and continuation of breastfeeding.

Resources

• State Health Departments Provide Community-Based Breastfeeding Support [PDF-350KB]
  This fact sheet outlines program successes and lessons learned from the CDC Breastfeeding Supplement grant. CDC grantees and breastfeeding practitioners can use this document when implementing community-based breastfeeding programs or strategies.
• CDC Guide to Strategies to Support Breastfeeding Mothers and Babies
  This guide provides state and local community members information to choose the breastfeeding intervention strategy that best meets their needs.

Program Highlights

• Breastfeeding Peer and Professional Support Highlights [PDF-1.66MB]
  These highlights focus on state health departments’ coordinated efforts to implement strategies that increase access to breastfeeding support in communities.

Program Highlights

• Minnesota Breastfeeding-Friendly Health Departments Program (BDFD)
  The program provides a 10-step process and toolkit for supporting breastfeeding practices at local public health agencies and tribal health boards.
• Support for Breastfeeding in the Workplace [PDF–180KB]
  Support for breastfeeding in the workplace includes several types of employee benefits and services, such as developing corporate policies to support breastfeeding women, educating all employees about workplace support for breastfeeding, and providing time and designated private space that is not a bathroom for breastfeeding or expressing milk.
• South Carolina: Healthy Carolina supports breastfeeding as best for babies and moms [PDF–368KB]
• Texas Mother-Friendly Worksite Program (MFWP)
  This program recognizes worksites that comply with its criteria for being “Mother-Friendly,” including having a written and communicated policy that provides space for breast milk expression in the worksite, flexible work schedules for breastfeeding mothers, access to clean running water to wash hands and clean equipment, and access to hygienic breast milk storage options.

General Breastfeeding Resources

• Wisconsin Breastfeeding-Friendly Childcare Provider Program
  The program uses Wisconsin’s Ten Steps to Breastfeeding Friendly Childcare Centers to help childcare centers remove barriers for breastfeeding mothers.

Links to non-federal government organizations found in this document are provided solely as a service to the reader. These links do not constitute an endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the federal government, and none should be inferred. CDC is not responsible for the content of the individual organization sites listed on this website.