Bringing Innocenti home: Creating innovative partnerships and applying new strategies to achieve Innocenti objectives in North Carolina hospitals

The Innocenti Declaration on the Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding was produced and adopted by WHO/UNICEF policymakers to improve infant and young child health (1990). The declaration advocates for societal changes that empower mothers to make informed choices about infant feeding. The authors believed that this could occur through social mobilization led by societal leaders from multiple venues. Member nations' efforts would target four primary goals: 1) Appoint a national breastfeeding coordinator and develop a multisectoral national breastfeeding committee; 2) Adopt and enforce the Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative in maternity service facilities; 3) Enforce the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes; and 4) Develop maternity protection legislation.

Despite signing this declaration, the United States has achieved very little organized mobilization around the four objectives. The need for new and innovative strategies led to the formation of an academic – coalition partnership between the Center for Infant and Young Child Feeding and Care at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health and the North Carolina State Breastfeeding Coalition. This partnership is actualizing Innocenti's objectives to achieve optimal infant and young child health. Collaborative efforts aim to achieve two of the four Innocenti objectives in North Carolina: enforcement of the Code and adoption of the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative. This presentation details research regarding Code enforcement and Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative in North Carolina. Further, it highlights the innovative strategies used to achieve these goals in North Carolina hospitals (with emphasis on strategies that may be effectively replicated elsewhere).