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Grant Funds Support for Breastfeeding at Rural Oklahoma Hospitals [1]
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Date: 2024-09-04
Ten rural Oklahoma hospitals will be selected to receive additional support for breastfeeding thanks to a new grant to the Oklahoma Breastfeeding Resource Center.
The center at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences campus in Oklahoma City received the three-year grant from the Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust. The grant provides $250,000 per year for three years.
“They really wanted to award entities that were going to address some of the gaps in care in our rural communities throughout the state, and they particularly were excited to have a breastfeeding initiative to award, and we were very honored to be chosen for that,” said Becky Mannel, director of the Oklahoma Breastfeeding Resource Center and a clinical associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology.
Research shows there are several health benefits to breastfeeding, including a reduced risk of obesity, diabetes, cancer and infections for the baby and a lower chance of hypertension, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and cancer for the mother, according to a press release about the grant.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for approximately six months after birth and continued breastfeeding for two years or beyond. About 84% of women begin breastfeeding in the United States, but only 27% are exclusively breastfeeding at six months. In Oklahoma, breastfeeding initiation averages 78% and the exclusive breastfeeding rate drops to 20% at six months. However, the percentages are lower in many rural parts of Oklahoma.
The Resource Center will use the grant to provide training and resources to hospitals to become “baby-friendly,” an international designation that focuses on breastfeeding support and mother-baby bonding. The designation entails several clinical practices, including educating pregnant women and their families about the importance of breastfeeding. Hospital staff also help mothers and babies experience skin-to-skin contact, breastfeeding immediately after birth, and to “room in” together 24 hours a day. If there is a medical reason that a breastfed baby needs additional milk, hospitals will provide safe-donor human milk from the Oklahoma Mothers’ Milk Bank, the state’s nonprofit milk bank.
The grant money will go toward costs associated with a hospital’s pursuit of the “baby-friendly” designation, including online and in-person training for staff and providers, technical assistance, and prenatal and postpartum lactation support for mothers.
Mannel said social determinants impact whether or not a mother will breastfeed. The top two factors are poverty and education, she said.
“Where we see higher poverty levels, lower education…across the population, and then we tend to see overall worse health outcomes, and that includes lower breastfeeding rates,” Mannel said. “We see [it] all over the country, but certainly here in Oklahoma as well.”
One way the Resource Center works to support soon-to-be mothers and new moms is through a hotline in which people can call or text. They are adding telehealth services through the grant money.
“We have board-certified lactation consultants who staff the hotline, and they use research and evidence to answer these questions for these families,” Jaclyn Huxford, a board-certified lactation consultant with the center, said in a Zoom interview.
Mannel said that over half of the counties in Oklahoma are considered by the March of Dimes to be maternity care deserts, which means there is not a birthing hospital or an obstetric provider in that county.
“We also know that a lot of those counties are lactation care deserts as well,” Mannel said. “There may not be access to any type of lactation consultant. That’s why the hotline is important…but we really hope to provide more resources, not only directly to the families through this expansion of the hotline, but to the hospitals that they’re likely to deliver in and train more staff and physicians so that there are more healthcare providers who are knowledgeable about basic breastfeeding management.”
Dr. John Siegle, an obstetrician with Mercy Hospital in Ada, Oklahoma, said breastfeeding needs to be encouraged in smaller communities like Ada.
“Certainly, we would benefit from increasing our educational resources,” he said in a phone interview.
He said there are several benefits to breastfeeding, particularly for the child, including decreasing infection rates and being healthier overall.
Siegle said his wife is a breastfeeding coordinator and his five daughters breastfed their children. But not everyone puts enough stress on breastfeeding, he added.
“It’s not emphasized that much in society,” he said. “It all starts with education.”
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