I wasn't planning to do one of these again so soon, but looking through the list of search terms used en route to Public Health Doula just offered too many opportunities to resist. How have people been finding my blog this month? Let's see:
"public health boring"
Well, sometimes. Sorry, stroke prevention...I just can't get excited about you, as important as you are, but I'm sure the stroke prevention people find my work boring too, so I'm happy we've all found our bliss.
"documentary how do you know when a molly is about to give birth"
Is a "molly" some kind of animal? Or this just specifically for women named Molly? And there's a whole documentary about them?
"i want to breastfeed buy nicu has my baby on bottle what should i do"
This makes me sad because I see it so often. Short answer: Demand a visit with a lactation consultant, and if the hospital doesn't have any find an outside IBCLC who can help you. Join a La Leche League group for support, and stay committed - time and patience can do a lot in this situation.
"baby friendly initiative bullshit"
I'm assuming this was a search done by a bitter postpartum floor nurse. I think I might know a few of them. Sorry you're not a fan of evidence-based practices!
"how should you supplement a hypoglycemic baby"
Depends on the hypoglycemia and the baby, but in many situations the first choice should always be breastfeeding/the mother's own milk!
"hate directed pushing"
Me too!!!
"barbie doula"
Oh my god, I can't wait for Doula Barbie! Let's figure out an outfit for her. I'm thinking her accessories should definitely include a birth ball, a rice sock, and a tiny copy of "The Labor Progress Handbook".
Showing posts with label public health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public health. Show all posts
Friday, June 10, 2011
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Opportunities for doula work internationally?
It's ask-the-readers time! I recently got this e-mail from Leila:
I live in the Boston area and am currently in the process of becoming a doula. I also plan on getting my masters in public health soon after I finish college. Your blog brings me lot of hope and excitement as I wet my feet in the field of public health! Maybe you can offer me some advice- I'm trying to find ways of working/volunteering as a doula somewhere in the Third World and I can't find anything! Do you have ideas or know of organizations I could look into that might offer such positions?I had only one or two possible leads, and I have heard similar inquires in the past and not really known where to send people then either. Does anyone out there have suggestions for her?
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Sunday evening research tip
Another good installment in Science and Sensibility's Becoming a Critical Reader series is up. Evaluating evidence! Reading critically! It warms my little public health heart.
Public health researchers (and students!) spend a lot of time collecting, reading, and evaluating literature. My assistantship this year has involved doing a heck of a lot of that, mostly using RefWorks, one of the many commercial citation managers available (there's a lot of hatin' for RefWorks out there, it seems, but it works fine for me and most importantly, it is free through the university.) I recently found out that many of my classmates were not aware of the following helpful trick I've found invaluable when amassing dozens or hundreds of citations. I felt so sad for all the people who didn't know about it, I decided to share it with all of you.
When using Google Scholar, click "Scholar Preferences", to the right of the search box. Scroll all the way down, and where it says "Show links to important citations into" select your citation manager and then click "Save preferences". When you go back to your search page, you'll now see an option under each search result to import it into your citation manager. Click on that, and it will open a new page in the citation manager where you can check, edit, and save the reference. So easy! Google Scholar has its drawbacks, but this is such a great feature that when I get citations from other sources I'll search for the source in Google Scholar just so I can import it. It saves so much time that I had time to write a whole blog post about it! ...But now I need to get back to work.
Public health researchers (and students!) spend a lot of time collecting, reading, and evaluating literature. My assistantship this year has involved doing a heck of a lot of that, mostly using RefWorks, one of the many commercial citation managers available (there's a lot of hatin' for RefWorks out there, it seems, but it works fine for me and most importantly, it is free through the university.) I recently found out that many of my classmates were not aware of the following helpful trick I've found invaluable when amassing dozens or hundreds of citations. I felt so sad for all the people who didn't know about it, I decided to share it with all of you.
When using Google Scholar, click "Scholar Preferences", to the right of the search box. Scroll all the way down, and where it says "Show links to important citations into" select your citation manager and then click "Save preferences". When you go back to your search page, you'll now see an option under each search result to import it into your citation manager. Click on that, and it will open a new page in the citation manager where you can check, edit, and save the reference. So easy! Google Scholar has its drawbacks, but this is such a great feature that when I get citations from other sources I'll search for the source in Google Scholar just so I can import it. It saves so much time that I had time to write a whole blog post about it! ...But now I need to get back to work.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Is it wrong to talk about the public health importance of breastfeeding?
So there was this article in Pediatrics that estimated there are 911 preventable deaths a year in the U.S. due to lack of breastfeeding.
Should we not say that? The comments sections of a lot of the media coverage of this article, and several bloggers, think so. Apparently, saying that lack of breastfeeding has real public health consequences is making women feel bad. Because there are a hundred ways in which women in this country get poor support and/or have their breastfeeding attempts outright sabotaged, a lot of women don't manage to breastfeed successfully. So we should stop saying that breastfeeding has important public health effects, because then some women will feel guilty that breastfeeding didn't work out for them. Do you follow? I don't. I really, really don't.
I see an implication in those comments that no one is grappling with the structural issues that affect breastfeeding success, that breastfeeding advocates are not interested in those issues. I beg to differ. At the Breastfeeding & Feminism conference (which was awesome, and I only wish I had the time and brainpower right now to talk about the many facets of awesomeness) you could meet dozens and dozens of people who grapple with these issues in a vital part of their academic, professional, and/or personal capacity. If you feel like all breastfeeding advocates are doing is trying to guilt or shame women into breastfeeding, you aren't looking very hard at breastfeeding advocacy in this country.*
Just at my university and the associated hospital, I can think of the following breastfeeding advocacy projects happening right now: improving child care centers' breastfeeding-friendliness, working for the hospital to go Baby-Friendly, getting funding for free pumps for NICU moms, providing breastfeeding support training for physicians and medical residents, improving lactation room information and access on campus, encouraging businesses to identify as breastfeeding-friendly, training lactation consultants, teaching prenatal breastfeeding classes, referring to local WIC peer counselors, providing discounted pumps to university students & employees, offering a local breastfeeding support group for African-American moms, and studying the impact of each Baby-Friendly step on hospital breastfeeding rates.
With all of that work to facilitate people reaching their breastfeeding goals on a structural and community level, you can understand why I'm so frustrated when articles like the one in Pediatrics get the reception they do. Which of those activities is targeted at making women feel guilty? Which is just about trying to control women's bodies and tell them what to do?
In fact, let's take a look at the conclusions section of the article itself which reads, in its entirety:
"By being incredibly selfish and not trying hard enough, 911 American mothers kill their babies every year by not breastfeeding. Clearly, public health and medical authorities have failed to make women feel guilty enough for not breastfeeding. Further efforts are required to make all mothers feel shame for any amount of formula that they offer their babies, regardless of their individual circumstances."
Oh, whoops! That wasn't the actual conclusions section. I got confused there for a moment. Here's the real one:
"By allowing breastfeeding rates to continue at their current levels, rather than implementing supports to help more families follow medically recommended guidelines, the United States incurs billions of dollars in excess costs and hundreds of preventable infant deaths. Action to improve breastfeeding rates, duration, and exclusivity, including creation of a national infrastructure to support breastfeeding, could be cost-effective."
I don't see a single mention in there even of education targeted at consumers. I don't even see individuals mentioned. I hear talk about "implementing supports" and "creation of a national infrastructure". I see an admonishment to our country to facilitate breastfeeding success. When people talk about "articles like this making women feel guilty because a lot of women can't breastfeed" and "don't they know that breastfeeding is hard", my jaw just drops. The whole point of articles like this is to point out that we need to do better at making breastfeeding less hard, at enabling more women to overcome breastfeeding difficulties, to illustrate to policymakers and public health authorities that those efforts are worth it for very concrete human and financial reasons. To make them feel guilty for the piss-poor job we do of supporting breastfeeding specifically, and mothers in general. If we don't talk about the reasons breastfeeding is important, how can we advocate for system change?
There are hundreds if not thousands of public health professionals out there trying to make the system changes that people responding to these articles often point out. How can we support breastfeeding if we're not supposed to say WHY?
*Let's note that "looking hard" does not mean "reading blogs and comment sections". Can I bait a flame-war about breast vs. formula with people getting obnoxiously self-righteous on both sides? Yes; I can also start one about Pepsi vs. Coke, but that doesn't mean Pepsi is actually putting out ads calling Coke drinkers elitist jerk-offs.
Should we not say that? The comments sections of a lot of the media coverage of this article, and several bloggers, think so. Apparently, saying that lack of breastfeeding has real public health consequences is making women feel bad. Because there are a hundred ways in which women in this country get poor support and/or have their breastfeeding attempts outright sabotaged, a lot of women don't manage to breastfeed successfully. So we should stop saying that breastfeeding has important public health effects, because then some women will feel guilty that breastfeeding didn't work out for them. Do you follow? I don't. I really, really don't.
I see an implication in those comments that no one is grappling with the structural issues that affect breastfeeding success, that breastfeeding advocates are not interested in those issues. I beg to differ. At the Breastfeeding & Feminism conference (which was awesome, and I only wish I had the time and brainpower right now to talk about the many facets of awesomeness) you could meet dozens and dozens of people who grapple with these issues in a vital part of their academic, professional, and/or personal capacity. If you feel like all breastfeeding advocates are doing is trying to guilt or shame women into breastfeeding, you aren't looking very hard at breastfeeding advocacy in this country.*
Just at my university and the associated hospital, I can think of the following breastfeeding advocacy projects happening right now: improving child care centers' breastfeeding-friendliness, working for the hospital to go Baby-Friendly, getting funding for free pumps for NICU moms, providing breastfeeding support training for physicians and medical residents, improving lactation room information and access on campus, encouraging businesses to identify as breastfeeding-friendly, training lactation consultants, teaching prenatal breastfeeding classes, referring to local WIC peer counselors, providing discounted pumps to university students & employees, offering a local breastfeeding support group for African-American moms, and studying the impact of each Baby-Friendly step on hospital breastfeeding rates.
With all of that work to facilitate people reaching their breastfeeding goals on a structural and community level, you can understand why I'm so frustrated when articles like the one in Pediatrics get the reception they do. Which of those activities is targeted at making women feel guilty? Which is just about trying to control women's bodies and tell them what to do?
In fact, let's take a look at the conclusions section of the article itself which reads, in its entirety:
"By being incredibly selfish and not trying hard enough, 911 American mothers kill their babies every year by not breastfeeding. Clearly, public health and medical authorities have failed to make women feel guilty enough for not breastfeeding. Further efforts are required to make all mothers feel shame for any amount of formula that they offer their babies, regardless of their individual circumstances."
Oh, whoops! That wasn't the actual conclusions section. I got confused there for a moment. Here's the real one:
"By allowing breastfeeding rates to continue at their current levels, rather than implementing supports to help more families follow medically recommended guidelines, the United States incurs billions of dollars in excess costs and hundreds of preventable infant deaths. Action to improve breastfeeding rates, duration, and exclusivity, including creation of a national infrastructure to support breastfeeding, could be cost-effective."
I don't see a single mention in there even of education targeted at consumers. I don't even see individuals mentioned. I hear talk about "implementing supports" and "creation of a national infrastructure". I see an admonishment to our country to facilitate breastfeeding success. When people talk about "articles like this making women feel guilty because a lot of women can't breastfeed" and "don't they know that breastfeeding is hard", my jaw just drops. The whole point of articles like this is to point out that we need to do better at making breastfeeding less hard, at enabling more women to overcome breastfeeding difficulties, to illustrate to policymakers and public health authorities that those efforts are worth it for very concrete human and financial reasons. To make them feel guilty for the piss-poor job we do of supporting breastfeeding specifically, and mothers in general. If we don't talk about the reasons breastfeeding is important, how can we advocate for system change?
There are hundreds if not thousands of public health professionals out there trying to make the system changes that people responding to these articles often point out. How can we support breastfeeding if we're not supposed to say WHY?
*Let's note that "looking hard" does not mean "reading blogs and comment sections". Can I bait a flame-war about breast vs. formula with people getting obnoxiously self-righteous on both sides? Yes; I can also start one about Pepsi vs. Coke, but that doesn't mean Pepsi is actually putting out ads calling Coke drinkers elitist jerk-offs.
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