Improving lactation policy in California schools: Local efforts leading the way

Breastfeeding is the best nutrition for infants and provides health benefits for new mothers as well, but breastfeeding rates drop precipitously when mothers return to work.  The County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA), in collaboration with the University of California San Diego Division of Child Development and Community Health (UCSD) and the San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE), created tools supporting businesses and schools in implementing workplace lactation policies.  UCSD worked with 15 low-income businesses, 10 other businesses, and seven school districts to provide resources, training, education and materials for implementing lactation supportive environments.  Schools are important workplaces to consider because they employ many women of childbearing age and because teachers’ schedules and classroom environments present specific challenges for workplace lactation. The California School Boards Association (CSBA), a collaboration of nearly 1,000 school districts and county offices of education throughout California, was contacted to determine the availability of policy language which could serve as a model for California school districts.  As a result, CSBA worked with UCSD to develop a lactation accommodation policy for statewide use, which was approved in mid-2011 and made available to all school districts throughout the state. By the conclusion of the project, four school districts in San Diego had adopted new voluntary policies. Currently, at least 148 school districts statewide have voluntarily adopted the CSBA policy.  This process illustrates how dedicated efforts at the local level can impact statewide and even national efforts to support lactation accommodation in the workplace.