Community / Project Resources

Make Breastfeeding (Y)our Business

By Mid-Iowa Community Action

Mid-Iowa Community Action (MICA) presented this poster at NWA’s Annual Conference in April 2017, and highlighted their local work with breastfeeding. As part of the CPHMC project, MICA’s coalition outlined education and resources available and created a breastfeeding friendly training guide.

Healthy Mothers and Children Coalition was formed with the Community Partnerships for Healthy Mothers and Children project through the NWA and CDC. Healthy Mothers and Children serves Marshall and Tama counties, two rural counties in Iowa. Both counties scored poorly in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Iowa County Health Rankings report, which is why these counties were selected out of Mid-­Iowa Community Action’s five core counties. Along with scoring poorly on the county health ranking report, they found a high percentage of the population living in poverty in these counties. Though both counties are rural in nature, there is an imbalance of resources between them. Marshall County has a larger population, but smaller land size, and has many more resources than Tama, which has a smaller population and a larger land size. Often Tama residents will come to Marshall County for medical services and even basic shopping needs. Taking a look closer into these communities, MICA found that education regarding breast milk and the effects of that on children’s nutrition was lacking. On top of that, there were not many resources for families that showed a desire to breastfeed. This is where the need for breastfeeding and infant nutrition education and resources became apparent.

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Date Added
December 5, 2017

Citation
Mid-Iowa Community Action (2017) Make Breastfeeding (Y)our Business. Available online: https://thewichub.sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/2017/12/MICA-poster-final.pdf