Maintaining Lactation Support to BIPOC Communities

Grantee: Open Arms Perinatal Services
Timeframe: July 2024 – June 2025 | Amount: $105,899.47

Open Arms will offer culturally and linguistically matched peer lactation support to promote the duration and sustaining of chest/breastfeeding in BIPOC communities throughout King County.

Open Arms has long recognized racism as a public health crisis, directly impacting maternal and infant health outcomes. In King County, non-white birthing individuals face two to four times higher rates of adverse birth outcomes compared to their white counterparts. They encounter increased levels of medical racism, leading to higher maternal and infant mortality rates, low birth weight, preterm birth rates, unplanned cesarean section births, and difficulties in sustaining lactation.

Breast/chestfeeding has been shown to protect babies against various short- and long-term illnesses and diseases, including asthma, obesity, type 1 diabetes, and sudden infant death syndrome. However, approximately 60% of lactating individuals do not breast/chestfeed as long as they would like, often due to early challenges, concerns about infant nutrition and weight, and unsupportive lactation policies in the workplace.

Data reveals significant disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes, highlighting the need for accessible and equitable lactation support. Open Arms has achieved notable success in supporting breastfeeding duration among low-income, primarily BIPOC clients, with 91% breastfeeding at six months, compared to only 51% of families enrolled in the WIC program. With support from the PHPDA Health Equity Fund, Open Arms aims to restore capacity and provide culturally responsive lactation support to Black/African American and Latine/Spanish-speaking communities, bridging the lactation support gap.

Support from the PHPDA’s Health Equity Fund will enable Open Arms to restore the capacity of its culturally and linguistically matched one-on-one lactation peer support services, focusing on Black/African-American and Latine communities. This program addresses the lack of accessible, culturally responsive lactation support and racial disparities in breastfeeding duration by providing individualized and low-barrier support. Enrolled families are more likely to sustain and maintain lactation, ensuring babies access the health benefits of human milk.

The program offers two pathways:

• Extended Support: Families receive long-term support for up to one year, starting in pregnancy, with tools and weekly check-ins until the baby turns eight weeks old. Visits continue based on individual family needs and goals for sustaining lactation for six, nine, or twelve months.
• Short-Term Support: Families receive urgent support for up to eight weeks postpartum to address unexpected challenges in the lactation journey.

Lactation Support Peer Counselors receive intensive training and ongoing mentoring, ensuring high-quality services. Families also have access to consultations with an International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant to address acute lactation needs.

The Lactation Support Program goes beyond traditional services by providing holistic support, addressing challenges such as domestic violence, food and housing insecurity, depression, and past trauma, which can impact breastfeeding.

Incorporating the target population in program design and delivery is essential, with Open Arms regularly seeking feedback through community conversations, surveys, and team meetings to inform program improvements and ensure responsiveness to families’ needs. The Short-Term Support Pathway was developed based on community feedback to provide more accessible lactation support, resulting in over 90% of families achieving their lactation goals.

ABOUT OUR GRANTEE

Open Arms Perinatal Services

“Since 1997, Open Arms has provided community-based support during pregnancy, birth, and early parenting to nurture strong foundations to last a lifetime. Through doula care, childbirth education, lactation counseling, and new parent support, we help birthing families achieve important milestones, strengthen parent-baby bonding, and boost long-term parenting skills.

We are the first organization of our kind in Washington State and were founded by a small group of community members who envisioned a future where no one would have to give birth without support. Imagining a world that cherishes birthing people, their babies, families, and communities, our founders created one of the first nonprofit organizations that provide free community-based and culturally-responsive doula services. Since then Open Arms has grown in size and services and has also supported the startup of other organizations to serve their communities.”