 |
| Jan Tedder and Elsa Quintana |
"Online education for WIC professionals: Teaching child development to extend breastfeeding duration" has just been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed journal, Clinical Lactation! This article describes a collaborative, innovative outreach project and pilot study that took place in 2016-2017 between Jan Tedder, (IBCLC, FNP and creator of HUG Your Baby) and Elsa Quintana (IBCLC and WIC Breastfeeding Coordinator for New Mexico).
Elsa and her colleagues recognized that while breastfeeding initiation is on the rise in New Mexico, women there (and across the nation) often do not meet either their personal breastfeeding goals or international breastfeeding recommendations.
These professionals know that misunderstanding a baby’s
behavior is a common reason that women add formula, begin solids prematurely, or give up breastfeeding altogether.
Aiming to help parents better understand how child development impacts
breastfeeding, Elsa arranged for 138 New Mexico WIC professionals to take HUG Your Baby’s Roadmap to Breastfeeding Success—a two-hour online program, with accompanying resources, that covers key information from birth to one year.
Jan and Elsa are very pleased that the positive results of their study will be published in a format that includes video links to components of The HUG program. They hope that this study will inspire other leaders in lactation--across the nation and around the world--to use these resources and to study their effectiveness to enhance professional education and to extend breastfeeding duration.
