The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or Act) require employers to provide time and a safe space for women employees who want to express their milk. The Act also require health plans to offer certain preventative services without cost-sharing requirements, including counseling and support for mothers who want to breastfeed and for nursing mothers.
The Surgeon General’s Call to Action is based on the best available science to explain how all sectors of the community can help create a supportive environment for mothers who choose to breastfeed. It shows how a community-wide approach can help reduce disparities among breastfeeding mothers and children of all backgrounds, and how to improve support for nursing women in their workplaces and communities.
Key points communicated about breastfeeding during the launch event included:
- Employers should work toward establishing paid maternity leave and high-quality lactation support programs. Employers should expand the use of programs that allow nursing mothers to have their babies close by so they can feed them during the day. They should also provide women with break time and private space to express breast milk.
- Health care systems should ensure that maternity care practices provide education and counseling on breastfeeding. Hospitals should become more “baby-friendly,” by taking steps like those recommended by the UNICEF/WHO’s Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative.
- Clinicians should ensure that they are trained to properly care for breastfeeding mothers and babies. They should promote breastfeeding to their pregnant patients and make sure that mothers receive the best advice on how to breastfeed.
- Families should give mothers the support and encouragement they need to breastfeed.
Officers are encouraged to discuss breastfeeding needs with their families, supervisors and/or managers. Specifically, officers should discuss the availability of private, adequate space and sufficient time during the work day to accommodate feeding schedules. Officers should also inquire about support services at Military Treatment Facilities (MTFs) or civilian healthcare settings, for care received outside a MTF.
Sources for this article were news releases from January 20, 2011 and July 30, 2010. For more information about the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding, please visit www.surgeongeneral.gov or http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2011pres/01/20110120a.html.
The Surgeon General Regina Benjamin with the panel speakers. From left to right: Ms. Gillian Pon, Dr. Sahira Long, VADM Regina Benjamin, CAPT Laurence Grummer-Strawn.
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HHS, Office of Public Health and Science |