UAB Hospital is now recognized as Baby-Friendly Designated birth facility. This prestigious international recognition comes from Baby Friendly USA’s Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, a global program that encourages and recognizes hospitals and birthing centers that offer an optimal level of care for breastfeeding mothers and their babies by practicing the World Health Organization’s Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding. This collaborative three year effort involves everyone who cares for pregnant or post-partum women and newborns from pre-natal clinics to Labor and Delivery through providers on the Mother Baby Unit, Newborn Nursery, and the Regional Newborn Intensive Care Unit/Continuing Care Nursery. Through this effort exclusive breastfeeding rates for healthy term newborns increased from 6.8% in 2012 to 50% currently.
The Southeast U.S. has the lowest breastfeeding rates in the country and the highest rates of adverse health conditions associated with lack of breastfeeding such as childhood obesity and diabetes. UAB Women and Infants services will continue to use the skills gained through this initiative to further increase breastfeeding rates for our patients and to serve as a community leader and resource for positive change where breastfeeding becomes the cultural norm for newborn nutrition. Further information can be found here.