Dear Breastfeed Durham Community,

Today, we join the Black Mamas Matter Alliance (BMMA) and communities across the country and around the world in observing Black Maternal Health Week — held every April 11–17, during National Minority Health Month, beginning on the International Day for Maternal Health and Rights.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Black Maternal Health Week. The theme this year is Rooted in Justice & Joy. We receive that fully. Justice, because the disparities Black Mamas and birthing people face are not accidents — they are the measurable result of structural racism in systems that were never built for liberation. And joy, because we have always known that rest, healing, celebration, and community are not luxuries. They are part of what we are fighting for.

Breastfeed Durham serves all Durham families, with equity as our foundation. Black families are at the center of our equity lens. And during this week, we lift up the organizations in our community doing specifically Black-centered perinatal work: MAAME, Inc. and Equity Before Birth. Thank you for your leadership, love, and labor for Black Mamas in Durham; it is irreplaceable.

With urgency, love, and joy —

The Breastfeed Durham Team 

On April 16th, 2026, Governor Stein is expected to sign a proclamation recognizing Black Maternal Health Week and commending its observance to all citizens. 

A proclamation does not end a crisis, but it opens doors. It names what has been too often unnamed in official spaces; and, it is a direct result of the organizing, coalition-building, and relentless community pressure that organizations across our region have sustained.

We celebrate it as a marker of progress — and as fuel for the work still ahead.

You can make a difference this week

•       Examine your lactation referral data by race. Are Black patients being offered lactation support at the same rates as White patients? If you do not know the answer — find out. That gap, wherever it exists, is a place where your institution can act.

•       Review how mistreatment shows up in your care culture. Nationally, 30% of Black women report experiencing mistreatment during maternity care. What are your systems doing to prevent it, identify it, and hold it accountable?

•       Build real referral pathways to community-based care. Doula support, peer lactation support, and community health workers improve outcomes for Black families — especially when those providers share lived experience. Refer your patients to Breastfeed Durham, MAAME, and Equity Before Birth. These referrals save lives.

•       Pursue or renew Baby-Friendly Hospital designation. The evidence is clear and the implementation infrastructure exists. Program costs typically range from $9,450 to $12,150. The cost of inaction is measured in lives. Breastfeed Durham is ready to support your team with free technical assistance.

•       Invest in ongoing cultural responsiveness — not as a one-time training—  but as a sustained institutional commitment to affirming, respectful care for Black Mamas and birthing people.

More than 87% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. The system has the capacity to save these lives. The question is whether it will choose to do so.

A Word About WIC — Because Our Families Deserve Better

Breastfeeding support does not happen in a vacuum. For many families, the road to lactation support runs directly through the WIC office — and right now, that road has too many dead ends.

We know what it looks like. You call the WIC office. No one picks up. You leave a voicemail — if you know to do that, if you have a quiet moment, if English is your first language, or if your phone has minutes. They call you back. You miss it. Or you catch it, and they schedule you for an appointment two weeks out. Two weeks, when your milk supply is still establishing. Two weeks, when your baby is losing weight. Two weeks, when you needed help yesterday.

We want to be clear: this is not a people problem. The staff at our WIC offices are doing heroic work with not enough money, not enough time, and not enough support. They are stretched thin by a system that has chronically underinvested in the exact families it was built to serve.

During Black Maternal Health Week, as we name the systems that fail Black Mamas and birthing people — WIC access has to be part of that conversation. Remote nutrition services, adequate staffing, and real funding for WIC are not nice-to-haves. They are life-and-death infrastructure for our families.

Support the Modern WIC Act. Send a letter to your Members of Congress today. Our families deserve a WIC system that actually picks up the phone.

Rooted Where Families Live: Durham Housing Authority & NC Diaper Bank Partnership

Safe infant feeding doesn't begin at a pediatrician's office. It begins at home — in the kitchen, with the water that comes out of the tap, in the middle of the night, when a baby is hungry and a caregiver is exhausted and doing their absolute best.

For families living in Durham Housing Authority communities, that moment can carry an extra weight. Questions about water safety are not abstract. They are reasonable. They are informed by decades of environmental injustice that has made communities of color right to ask: is this water safe for my baby?

Breastfeed Durham, in partnership with the NC Diaper Bank, has been distributing safe infant feeding kits at Durham Housing Authority locations — because we believe that every infant deserves optimal nutrition, and because meeting families where they are is not charity. It is what justice looks like on the ground.

These kits are part of how we stay rooted in joy — making sure families have what they need to feed their babies safely, confidently, and with dignity, while we continue the longer work of normalizing breastfeeding across all the spaces and places our community calls home.

Want to support this work? Shop our infant feeding supply registry — items are distributed in collaboration with the NC Diaper Bank.

We want to highlight as many events, celebrations, and opportunities as possible for our community!

Please email newsletter@breastfeedingcommunities.org if you have any upcoming events, celebrations, or opportunities you'd like us to share in our upcoming newsletters. 

I remember the first time I met Joy Spencer in 2018. She was talking about bringing Black advocates together to create real change—not just conversations, but action. At the time, it felt big. Needed. Possible.

For Breastfeed Durham, that conversation didn’t stop there. It helped shape what became the Black Breastfeeding Coalition—space for connection, leadership, and community-driven work.

Since then, we’ve had the privilege of watching Equity Before Birth grow into a movement. This Black Maternal Health Week, we’re proud to celebrate them as a partner and as an example of what we believe deeply: Community is a verb.

We see it in how they support families with real resources.
We see it in how they center Black leadership and lived experience.
We see it in how they show up—consistently.

At Breastfeed Durham, our mission is to build a Breastfeeding Family Friendly Community. That work has always been about partnership.

We’re grateful to be building alongside Equity Before Birth—and to celebrate the work they are doing to make sure families are supported, connected, and not doing this alone.