The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity released county-level breastfeeding initiation rates and related maps using birth certificate data from the 2018-2019 National Vital Statistics System.
Celebrating: The Breastfeeding Initiation Rates in Durham County were 89.7% in 2018-2019.
Birth certificate data from 2018–2019 National Vital Statistics System were used to determine the percentage of live infants who initiated breastfeeding. Breastfeeding initiation was defined as receiving any breast milk or colostrum during the period between delivery and discharge from the birth facility or completion of the birth certificate for home births.
Families in our community are initiating chest/breastfeeding! We are committed to addressing disparities in chest/breastfeeding rates and supporting Durham families.
The Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities initiative began with a vision to improve lactation duration by developing a set of measures to guide communities to welcome lactating families especially Black and Brown historically marginalized families, in all the spaces and places in which families live and work and shop and play. We all envision a world in which parents, families, and babies leverage their expertise to transform systems to live full and healthy lives. We unapologetically committed to a racial and gender equity – which include Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Middle Eastern, Asian/Pacific Islander, Multiracial parents, babies, and families including nonbinary parents, both transgender and cisgender. The foundation of Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities is to transform the culture of a community to that chest/breastfeeding normalized for not just white women, but for the whole community especially Black and Brown families through increasing connectivity between existing parts of the community and elevating the work of historically marginalized community members with the voices of Black and Brown lactating parents at the center of this work.