Breastfeeding and first foods--including human milk and infant formula--affect us all as individuals and a society of eaters and feeders. They also shape us in part through having significant effects on community health and well-being, workplace strength, and environmental integrity. In addition, we all affect breastfeeding and first foods. Society, the economy, and the environment constrain and enable breastfeeding success, for example, and they often do so differently by race, class, and other social categories. It is important we recognize and address these realities for our own individual interests as well as those we as a citizenry hold in common.

In 2004, Canadian officials introduced amendments to the country's Plant Breeders' Rights Act. An intellectual property movement supported the changes and a farmers' rights movement opposed them. Though conditions seemed to favor the former, the latter was more successful. To explain this, I compare each movement's deployment of professional and experiential expertise in their framing attempts. I argue that professional expertise, acquired through formalized training, and experiential expertise, gained through lived experience, provide unique and important support in claims making; highly resonant frames are often those built and maintained with both. Indeed, the farmers' rights movement's use of professional and experiential expertise together in framing the amendments helps account for its efficacy against the intellectual property movement (which failed to do so). This analysis contributes to our understanding of frame resonance and highlights underexplored South-to-North channels of influence due to the particular role of Southerners' experiential expertise in this comparison.

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Public comment periods are a primary mechanism for engaging citizens in Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) processes and, in turn, federal decisions with significant environmental, economic and cultural impacts. Yet citizens often feel disenfranchised throughout the five main stages of these comment periods. As a result, when members of the public participate in public comment periods, they are increasingly doing so not only to provide feedback on a given proposed project but to critique the nature of civic engagement and democratic decision-making occurring today. EIS public comment periods are thus at times transforming from a means of enhancing the sustainability of federal actions to a civic tool for challenging what are viewed to be exclusive governance practices. Improving the dynamics of public involvement in EIS public comment periods by engaging citizens earlier, developing clearer guidelines for incorporating civic input into decision-making, diversifying EIS preparers, and moving public comment periods to a deliberative model can enhance democratic engagement and the environmental, economic and cultural sustainability of future government actions.

Background Millions of people today live in contaminated environments. Often, these environments disproportionately affect nonwhite, racialized families who are low-income, pregnant, and/or feeding young children. Despite the overwhelming recognition among scholars and practitioners of these realities, however, few lactation or other health professionals center socially disadvantaged families’ perspectives in their work. Community expertise is therefore often absent from the credentialed lactation and associated support that tends to be advanced in contaminated environments. Research Aims The aims of this study were to: (1) Describe how vulnerable community members experience toxic environments, and (2) Explore the strategies vulnerable community members themselves employ and seek out from professionals to achieve resilience in these environments. Methods The research design for this study was prospective and cross-sectional. We surveyed 62 Milwaukeean African American women of childbearing age and their close networks of support from predominantly low-income census tracts, and we engaged 14 women in a community conversation on their experiences, strategies, and desires generated from living in Milwaukee during a lead contaminated drinking water crisis. Results Participants were aware and concerned about toxic poisoning in their environment, especially as it affects their children. Nonetheless, societal factors constrained their levels of preparedness and action in response, including around chestfeeding, breastfeeding, expressed milk feeding, and artificial feeding methods. Conclusion Lactation providers and other health professionals can better support at-risk families by integrating their perspectives into dominant frameworks for information-sharing, preventative resource distribution, and supporting community self-determination.