F6 - Supporting Healthy Start Performance Project: Delivering Breastfeeding Support to 101 Communities Nation-wide

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Full Description: The Supporting Healthy Start Performance Project (SHSPP) assists 101 Healthy Start (HS) grant recipients (grantees) across the nation. The HS Program provides grants to high-risk communities with infant mortality rates at least 1.5 times the U.S. national average and high rates of other adverse perinatal outcomes (e.g., low birthweight, preterm birth, maternal morbidity and mortality). HS works to reduce the disparity in health status between the general population and individuals who are members of racial or ethnic minority groups.
To support these 101 HS programs and communities, SHSPP’s Technical Assistance (TA) and Support Center (TASC) provides capacity building assistance (CBA), including ongoing TA, training and education to HS grant recipients in accordance with the program’s four approaches to reduce disparities in infant mortality and adverse perinatal outcomes. The four approaches are to: 1) improve women’s health, 2) improve family health and wellness, 3) promote systems change, and 4) assure impact and effectiveness through ongoing HS workforce development, data collection, quality improvement (QI), performance monitoring and program evaluation.
As part of Approach 2, improve family health and wellness, HS programs seek to increase the proportion of child participants whose parent/caregiver report they were ever breastfed or fed pumped milk as well as increase the proportion of child participants whose parent/caregiver breastfed or fed breast milk at 6 months, with a particular focus on improving rates among Black participants. As a result of these priorities and in response to supports requested by HS grantees, the TASC dedicates substantial programming to the topic of breastfeeding.
In this workshop, the TASC seeks to:
1. Share the impetus for and the nature of the TASC’s extensive breastfeeding activities, particularly those dedicated to increasing rates of and challenges related to breastfeeding among Black mothers
2. Review breastfeeding data collected through the TASC’s evaluation efforts
3. Highlight grantee experiences with the TASC’s breastfeeding activities and the impact that these have had.
Throughout the workshop, the TASC will describe the myriad breastfeeding-related programmatic offerings that seek to support HS grantees, ranging from all-grantee webinars to closed cohorts and academies dedicated to breastfeeding to scholarship opportunities for lactation consultants. Next, the TASC’s evaluation team will present data that has been collected as part of the SHSPP, with a specific focus on grantee-reported benchmarks related to breastfeeding as well as grantee engagement and satisfaction with the TASC’s breastfeeding activities. Finally, a HS grantee that has been actively engaged with the TASC’s breastfeeding activities, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, will share its direct experiences participating in the TASC’s breastfeeding programming and will discuss the impacts of these activities on their work.

Abbreviated Description: The Supporting Healthy Start Performance Project (SHSPP) assists 101 Healthy Start (HS) grant recipients (grantees) across the nation. SHSPP’s Technical Assistance (TA) and Support Center (TASC) dedicates substantial programming to the topic of breastfeeding. The TASC will describe the breastfeeding-related programmatic offerings, ranging from grantee webinars to closed cohorts and academies dedicated to breastfeeding and related topics to scholarship opportunities for lactation consultants. Next, the TASC’s applied research and evaluation team will present data that has been collected as part of the SHSPP. Finally, a HS grantee, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, will share their experiences participating in the TASC’s breastfeeding programming and will discuss the impact on their work.