Soul Food for Your Baby: Educating policy and enhancing breastfeeding practice among African Americans

Background/Significance: The benefits of breastfeeding are well documented, but are enjoyed unevenly across racial lines. Nationwide, Blacks are 2.5 times less likely to breastfeed than Whites due to stigma, lack of social support, and beliefs of inconvenience, pain, and sexuality. Objective/purpose: Soul Food For Your Baby aims to increase knowledge and strategies to address cultural attitudes and barriers surrounding breastfeeding among African American mothers ages 14-25. Methods: Unlike most breastfeeding programs, the project targets barriers of young Black mothers. Based on a modified version of the Theory of Reasoned Action, the project addresses the individual attitudes, subjective norms, social perceptions and mothers' experiences, which influence breastfeeding intention, initiation and maintenance. Focusing on South Los Angeles, Soul Food For Your Baby will educate women about their rights to breastfeed while encouraging the practice through culturally sensitive radio PSAs, brochures and billboards. It will also feature a breast pump loan program, home-based peer consultancy, and education classes. Impact will be assessed by comparing breastfeeding rates of project participants to patients from area hospitals. Results: Breastfeeding can lead to reduced medical costs and improved health for society as well as women and children of an at-risk population. Mothers can also become advocates of the practice, leading to greater acceptance in a somewhat resistant community. This promising approach can be adapted to match organizational capacity and community need. Discussion/Conclusions: In addition to learning about breastfeeding disparities, participants will learn strategies to inform populations about breastfeeding policies and practice.