(1) Background: Critical gaps in the U.S. healthcare system perpetuate adverse reproductive health outcomes for Black people. Grounded in reproductive justice and trauma-informed care, Breastfeeding Awareness and Empowerment (BAE) has developed a program titled BAE Cafe to directly address these gaps by providing community-based lactation and perinatal mental health support. A literature review identified key programmatic gaps, namely, access to knowledge relevant to troubleshooting breastfeeding, peer support, community support and healthcare system support, and system-level factors that impede families and communities from accessing lactation support. (2) Methods: This paper describes BAE Cafe through a group process observation and participant survey. (3) Results: The observation of groups highlighted the core elements of the BAE Cafe model: knowledge, support and mental health support in a peer driven format. Participant survey feedback was overwhelmingly positive and highlighted the critical importance of lactation support for Black women by Black women and BAE’s role in participants’ decisions to continue breastfeeding. (4) Conclusions: BAE Cafe is a replicable, scalable, peer-driven and low-barrier intervention that has the potential to improve outcomes for Black families. Additional research and investment are now needed to assess large-scale implementation to reduce disparities and address health inequity across different contexts and settings.
Creating a supportive environment for breastfeeding mothers in the primary care setting has been shown to improve breastfeeding rates and duration. An important aspect of establishing a breastfeeding-friendly practice is to engage and educate health care providers. To increase consistency of breastfeeding care and interventions across a large primary care network, we established an Ambulatory Breastfeeding Consortium (ABC) focused on information sharing and discussion centered on care of breastfeeding and lactating families. The COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the need to share up-to-date education and guidance, and the importance of the role of primary care providers in breastfeeding support. The ABC has been effective in engaging primary care nurses and other clinicians and disseminating information while encouraging discussion on the importance of providing informed care to breastfeeding families. Although more breastfeeding-specifi c education is recommended for clinicians, the ABC serves as a model for primary care clinicians to improve their knowledge and provide support for families through education, shared experience, and awareness across many pediatric primary care network sites.
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