Healthcare professionals, including lactation consultants and nurses, have the unique challenge of educating the community and their patients on healthy breastfeeding and the benefits of lactation. However, breastfeeding is not efficiently represented in texts specific to health promotion. With her 30 years’ experience educating undergraduate and graduate nursing students and interprofessional healthcare providers on maternal–infant health and lactation, Suzanne Hetzel Campbell is breaking that tradition. Lactation: A Foundational Strategy for Health Promotion uses evidence-based research and a person-centered care framework to empower healthcare practitioners to advocate for and support families in their breastfeeding ventures.

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) began 40 years ago as a pilot program and has since grown to serve over 8 million pregnant women, and mothers of and their infants and young children. Today the program serves more than a quarter of the pregnant women and half of the infants in the United States, at an annual cost of about $6.2 billion. Through its contribution to the nutritional needs of pregnant, breastfeeding, and post-partum women; infants; and children under 5 years of age; this federally supported nutrition assistance program is integral to meeting national nutrition policy goals for a significant portion of the U.S. population. To assure the continued success of the WIC, Congress mandated that the Food and Nutrition Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reevaluate the program's food packages every 10 years. In 2014, the USDA asked the Institute of Medicine to undertake this reevaluation to ensure continued alignment with the goals of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This, the second report of this series, provides a summary of the work of phase I of the study, and serves as the analytical underpinning for phase II in which the committee will report its final conclusions and recommendations.

The Department of Child and Adolescent Health has developed guidelines on optimal feeding of low birth weight infants in low- and middle-income countries. These guidelines include recommendations on what to feed low-birth weight infants, when to start feeding, how to feed, how often and how much to feed. The guidelines were developed using the process described in the WHO Handbook for Development of Guidelines. Systematic reviews were conducted to answer 18 priority questions identified by the guidelines development group. The population of interest is low-birth weight infants, and the critical outcomes include mortality, severe morbidity, growth and development. The implementation of these guidelines in low- and middle-income countries is expected to improve care and survival of low birth weight infants.

This guideline aims to help Member States and their partners in their efforts to make informed decisions on the appropriate nutrition actions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) the global targets set in the Comprehensive implementation plan on maternal infant and young child nutrition and the Global Strategy for Women?s Children?s and Adolescents? Health 2016-2030. The recommendations in this guideline are intended for a wide audience including policy-makers their expert advisers and technical and programme staff at organizations involved in the design implementation and scaling-up of anaemia prevention programmes and in nutrition actions for public health.

This book sets out the facts and lines of action that enable health services to achieve their full potential as part of society's first line of support to breast-feeding. Against the larger backdrop of community attitudes that variously sustain or restrain breast-feeding the 32-page booklet translates the most up-to-date knowledge and practical experience about lactation into precise recommendations on care for mothers before during and after pregnancy and delivery. The statement begins by listing 10 important steps to successful breast-feeding intended for application in every facility providing maternity services and care for newborn infants. Readers are told that mothers should be helped to breast-feed within a half hour of birth that newborn infants should be given no food or drink other than breast milk unless medically indicated and that rooming-in should be practised 24 hours a day. Particularly practical is a section devoted to individual care, which spells out procedures to follow at five important stages from prenatal history-taking and counseling through care during and after delivery to what to do when a mother is discharged from the health care facility. Readers are informed that the risk of neonatal infection is in fact greater in the closed environment of a nursery than when infants remain with their mothers and that exclusive on-demand breast-feeding should be the norm throughout the clinic or hospital stay. The booklet concludes with a 20-point check-list that maternity wards and clinics can use to gauge how well they are protecting promoting and supporting breast-feeding.

The main aim of this practical Handbookis to strengthen counselling and communication skills of skilled attendants (SAs) and other health providers, helping them to effectively discuss with women, families and communities the key issues surrounding pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, postnatal and post-abortion care. Counselling for Maternal and Newborn Health Careis divided into three main sections. Part 1 is an introduction which describes the aims and objectives and the general layout of the Handbook. Part 2 describes the counselling process and outlines the six key steps to effective counselling. It explores the counselling context and factors that influence this context including the socio-economic, gender, and cultural environment. A series of guiding principles is introduced and specific counselling skills are outlined. Part 3 focuses on different maternal and newborn health topics, including general care in the home during pregnancy; birth and emergency planning; danger signs in pregnancy; post-abortion care; support during labor; postnatal care of the mother and newborn; family planning counselling; breastfeeding; women with HIV/AIDS; death and bereavement; women and violence; linking with the community. Each Session contains specific aims and objectives, clearly outlining the skills that will be developed and corresponding learning outcomes. Practical activities have been designed to encourage reflection, provoke discussions, build skills and ensure the local relevance of information. There is a review at the end of each session to ensure the SAs have understood the key points before they progress to subsequent sessions.