Parental Leave, Lactation, and Childcare Policies at Top US Schools of Public Health

Abstract

Objectives. To describe policies related to parental leave, breastfeeding, and childcare for faculty and staff at top schools of public health in the United States.Methods. We identified the top 25 schools of public health from the US News and World Report rankings. We reviewed each institutional Web site to identify publicly available policies as of July 2018.Results. For birth mothers, 80% (20/25) of the schools provided paid childbearing leave to faculty (mean = 8.2 weeks), and 48% (12/25) provided paid childbearing leave for staff (mean = 5.0 weeks). For nonbirth parents, 68% (17/25) provided paid parental leave for faculty and 52% (13/25) for staff (range = 1-15 weeks). We found that 64% (16/25) of the schools had publicly available lactation policies, and 72% (18/25) of the schools had at least 1 university-run on-campus childcare center.Conclusions. The majority of top US schools of public health provide paid leave to faculty birth mothers. However, most schools fall short of the 14 weeks recommended by the ). Reprints can be ordered at http://www. ajph.org by clicking the "Reprints" link.

Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies?

“…Columns 5-8 show analogous estimates for non-top-5 publications. While the point estimates suggest 23 An important caveat is that department rankings are inherently noisy and may change over time. We define moves as up, down, or lateral based on tiers consisting of similarly ranked departments.…”

“…Columns 7 and 8 show that conditional on not getting tenure at the policy university, men are no more likely to move to higher or lower ranked departments, while women are 25 percentage points less likely to move down. 23 In other words, some of the women who are denied tenure because of gender-neutral policies move to similarly ranked departments. This is consistent with rising tenure standards pushing out some marginal women.…”

Women in Academic Psychiatry: Inequities, Barriers, and Promising Solutions

“…Further, for residents, leave makeup time requirements should be abandoned in favor of competency assessments, and the use of sick leave should not be required [47]. Breastfeeding policies should be flexible and provide greater sense of caregiver agency [45,47,55]. Onsite childcare availability should be standardized or at least subsidized as an incentive for recruitment and retention, especially for URM faculty [5,47].…”

“…On the other end of the lifespan, paid sick and family leave policies play a critical role to relieve the growing burden and costs of family caregiving of older adults [56]. Such policies, along with flexible schedules, could go a long way toward increasing engagement, satisfaction, and retention and are important to advance the careers of women, especially URM, faculty [41,47,55].…”

Re: “Academic Productivity Differences by Gender and Child Age in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine Faculty During the COVID-19 Pandemic” by Krukowski et al.

“…In addition, as already implemented in a few select institutions, conveniently located childcare centers and tenure clock extensions should be widely available to this population to help counteract the systemic barriers. 4 Supporting women professionals with young children by creating equitable work environments is essential, as the long-term effects of women attrition from academia may be stark. 5 The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted that practices can successfully change rapidly when deemed necessary, and the findings of Krukowski et al 1 illustrate the necessity for swift implementation of parental policies to prevent furthering gender inequities in academia.…”