Jamaica Hospital and Flushing Hospital recently jointly celebrated World Breast Feeding Week with several wonderful events promoting breastfeeding in our community. This year’s theme was “Breast Feeding, a Winning Goal-for-Life.”
World Breast Feeding Week is celebrated every year during the first week of August. The goal of this campaign is to promote exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of an infant’s life. This has been shown to yield tremendous health benefits such as providing critical nutrients, better immune responses, and protection from deadly diseases such as pneumonia.
Some of the events that were sponsored by the hospitals were baby showers where mothers were given gift bags with literature on the benefits of breastfeeding. Healthy snacks and drinks were provided and many raffle prizes were won by those in attendance.
Another event that took place during the week was a joint health awareness day held at the YMCA in downtownJamaica. Breastfeeding consultants attended this event and spoke to many of the women who came to the event. Healthy snacks were provided and participants were able to have their blood pressure and BMI checked.
A Breast Feeding symposium was also held for our staff at which Dr. Virginia Robertson, medical specialist for provider education at the NYC Department of Health. The topic of Dr. Robertson’s presentation was “The Role of Multidisciplinary Collaborations in Promoting Breast Feeding.”
All of these events were organized by staff from the Women’s Health and the WIC departments at bothJamaicaHospitalandFlushingHospital. The breastfeeding campaign is all throughout the year. The events that we participate in during World Breast Feeding Week show the importance of this initiative and serve to educate women of the benefits to their children and to themselves.