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Home › Articles › Breastfeeding Advocacy › 5 Ways to Support Breastfeeding

5 Ways to Support Breastfeeding

Lactivism 101

By Debora Geary

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Every woman breastfeeding can make a difference. "We had a community in northern BC [British Columbia] who had a low breastfeeding rate," says Jones. "On the day of the Challenge they had one mom breastfeeding. That one mom was on the front page of their paper, and this resulted in the starting of a breastfeeding support group with all the pregnant women in that town being invited to join. You never know what will happen!"

Other organizations also organize public breastfeeding events. Check out ProMom's NurseOut (www.promom.org) during Breastfeeding Week in early August. Last year they had groups nursing in local shopping malls and Wal-Marts all across the United States.

5. Fight formula.
The biggest direct competitor to breastfeeding is baby formula. Many breastfeeding advocates argue that formula companies don't play fair. Their marketing practices are often viewed as aggressive, inaccurate and even coercive.

The World Health Organization (WHO), an arm of the United Nations and UNICEF, have defined what they believe to be acceptable behavior for marketing baby formula in the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. While the United States voted against the Code in 1981, 13 years later under the Clinton administration, it became the last country in the World Health Assembly to get on board. The Code includes such provisions as: NO provision of free samples to mothers, NO promotion of products in health care facilities and NO pictures of babies on formula containers. Twenty-two years after the Code came to be, it is clear that formula companies are still in significant violation of these provisions, and the United States is not doing a lot about it.


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