Grant: Planning Grants

Breast milk is the ideal food for babies, as it protects newborns against infections and other conditions. It also protects mothers against some types of cancers. By making children and mothers healthier, breastfeeding reduces the costs to society by decreasing rates of hospitalizations, especially in young infants. Exclusive breastfeeding (feeding no other foods or liquids than breast milk) is recommended for the first 6 months after birth. In Canada, breastfeeding rates are high right after birth, but they drop quickly over the next few months. Only 14% of mothers exclusively breastfeed their child at 6 months. We know that doctors' recommendations have a direct impact on how long women will breastfeed, and that helping mothers with breastfeeding problems is part of physicians' responsibility. Unfortunately, residents (doctors-in-training) in Canada do not learn how to help mothers breastfeed during their training period. We also know from our previous recent study that the beliefs, confidence, attitudes and knowledge of Canadian primary care doctors (family doctors and pediatricians) are suboptimal when it comes to breastfeeding. This is true also in many other parts of the world. Given the health, social and economic advantages that breastfeeding provides to babies, mothers and society in general, improving breastfeeding duration is an important public health initiative. There is therefore a great need to develop a solid learning program for pediatric residents, so as to give them the skills they need to help mothers breastfeed. We therefore propose to bring together a group of breastfeeding researchers, breastfeeding experts, medical education experts, residents and mothers to develop a program that we will ultimately put in place in residency programs across the country. This has the potential to increase breastfeeding rates significantly and make our children healthier. The meeting is planned for April 17th and 18th 2014, in Ottawa.