“The Florida Department of Health fully supports breastfeeding as a vital health activity,” said State Surgeon General and Secretary of Health Dr. John Armstrong. “We commend all hospitals and health care facilities that are working toward practicing the WHO/UNICEF Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding and encourage others to adopt these practices so that all mothers and newborns achieve the best health possible.”
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Become a STAR Maternity HOSPITAL!
The Florida Department of Health has partnered with 27 Florida hospitals from 15 counties to participate in Healthiest Weight Florida’s Baby Steps to Baby Friendly Initiative. This initiative focuses on increasing breastfeeding initiation and duration among Florida women. There is a growing body of evidence that supports breastfeeding as critical to improved health outcomes of mothers and babies.Learn more....
Baby Steps to Baby Friendly Hospitals - FACEBOOK to provide hospitals working toward improving maternity care practices with tailor made technical assistance based on evidence.
The Florida Breastfeeding Coalition has designed a quality improvement award based on the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding and Baby-Friendly USA 4-D Pathway.
Any Florida maternity hospital or birthing center can achieve one to four stars in the five star Florida Breastfeeding Coalition's Florida Quest For Quality Maternity Care Award project without applying to Baby-Friendly USA or paying application fees. The project does follow the 4-D Pathway of Baby-Friendly USA because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognizes Baby-Friendly as the optimal quality in evidence-based maternity care and infant feeding practices. Only those hospitals who do actually apply to Baby-Friendly USA and receive the Baby-Friendly Hospital designation will be awarded five stars by Florida Breastfeeding Coalition.
This YahooGroup list is for those maternity facilities who would like to be on a support list to share successes as well as to discuss implementation barriers and suggestions. This is also a way to stay in contact the FBC Chair of the Florida Quest for Quality Maternity Care Award, Heidi C. Agostinho, Ph.D, IBCLC.
PROJECT BACKGROUND:
The Florida Breastfeeding Coalition is committed to encouraging improved maternity policy and practice in infant nutrition and care in Florida maternity care institutions. Breastfeeding provides optimal nutrition for infants and is associated with decreased risk in infant morbidity and mortality as well as maternal morbidity. Maternity policies and practices in hospitals and birth centers can influence breastfeeding behaviors and outcomes during a period critical to successful establishment of breastfeeding. Much of the literature, including a Cochrane review found that institutional changes in maternity care policies and practices makes for improved breastfeeding success by increasing initiation and duration of breastfeeding.
The Florida Breastfeeding Coalition recognizes that becoming a Baby- Friendly Hospital has special challenges both administratively and financially, therefore, efforts to become Baby-Friendly are often dismissed. The new Joint Commission Perinatal Quality Core Measures recommendation that all babies leave the hospital exclusively breastmilk feed. The CDC finds that maternity hospitals are not adequately supporting breastfeeding. There is a national campaign to encourage maternity hospitals to implement evidence-based practices in their maternity and infant feeding practices.
1) These slides not only offer evidence-based practice reinforced, but also give the cost savings for the implementation of The Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding starting on pg. 240. Being able to show savings to hospitals time, staff and the cost saving is key to implementing changes to improve maternity and infant feeding practices.
2) Colorado's 5 step program reportGetting it Right after Delivery: Five Hospital Practices that Support Breastfeeding shows background information on their program as well as reported improved rates in initiation and duration of breastfeeding.
3) US Dept. of Health and Human Services Blueprint for Action on Breastfeeding presents the importance of breastfeeding as a healthcare preventative objective.
7) Healthy Birth Practices from Lamaze Internationalsupports skin-to-skin with evidence-based research.
8) Surgeon General's Call to Action to Supporting Breastfeeding released January 20, 2011.
9) The Revised 4rd Edition of Wellstart’s Lactation Management Self-Study Modules, Level 1. Excellent Self-Study with pre and post test exam for hospital staff or any healthcare worker who works with mothers and babies.
10) On June 16, 2011 U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin and members of the National Prevention Council released the first ever National Prevention Strategy which includes breastfeeding as an important preventive healhtcare strategy.
11) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report August 2, 2011(Early Release/Vol.60) Vital Signs: Hospital Practices to Support Breastfeeding - United States, 2007 and 2009
12) Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine Protocol # 7 Model Breastfeeding Policy, Volume 5, Number 4, 2010
13) Kaiser Permanente 2012
14) Stepping up the Baby Friendly NICU, J Hum Lact 2013 29: 287
The Joint Commission Press Release (November 30, 2012)-For hospitals with 1,100 or more births per year, the perinatal care measure set will become the mandatory fifth measure set. The Joint Commission chose the perinatal care measure set because of the high volume of births in the United States (four million per year) and because it affects a significant portion of accredited hospitals. The Joint Commission will monitor the threshold of 1,100 births over the first four to eight quarters of data collection to reassess ongoing applicability. The Joint Commission expects that this threshold will be modified over time so that more hospitals are included and strongly encourages hospitals to consider adopting this measure set before the required effective date of January 1, 2014.
This measure set includes exclusive breast milk feeding.
