Category Archives: For Health Professionals

CDC report: Most hospitals market formula, undermine breastfeeding

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released results from a national survey of US maternity centers showing that 70 percent of birth facilities continue to market formula to new mothers, undermining health recommendations. In an editorial note accompanying the study, published in the journal “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” the authors comment:

Facilities should consider discontinuing these practices to provide more positive influences on breastfeeding initiation and duration.

For more information on mPINC, read the press release from the Massachusetts Breastfeeding Coalition.

Breastfeeding rates, and Ban the Bags, in The New York Times

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A recent article in The New York Times reported on rising US breastfeeding rates. In the article, Bobby Philipp, a pediatrician at Boston University, pointed to formula bags as a key obstacle to breastfeeding success. Noting that most hospitals still market formula to new mothers, she said:

That’s a problem because at least five studies have shown that when a doctor or nurse hands the family that bag, even if they take the formula out, that mother will have less success with breast-feeding

Read the article

The Language of Banning the Bags

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By Melissa Bartick, MD, MS
Chair, Massachusetts Breastfeeding Coalition

February, 2007 — In Massachusetts, getting hospitals to stop marketing baby formula became a battle of words fought in the press and in the corridors of the State House. In February 2006, then-Governor Mitt Romney directed our state’s Public Health Council to rescind the country’s first state regulation to ban hospital distribution of formula company discharge bags. Romney, his spokesman, and other opponents of the ban argued that women should be “free to choose” how they feed their babies, and that women should not be “forced” to breastfeed. Continue reading →