Community Perspectives During a Lead Contaminated Drinking Water Crisis: Lessons for Lactation and Other Health Providers.

BACKGROUND: Millions of people today live in contaminated environments. Often, these environments disproportionately affect nonwhite, racialized families who are low-income, pregnant, and/or feeding young children. Despite the overwhelming recognition among scholars and practitioners of these realities, however, few lactation or other health professionals center socially disadvantaged families' perspectives in their work. Community expertise is therefore often absent from the credentialed lactation and associated support that tends to be advanced in contaminated environments. RESEARCH AIMS: The aims of this study were to: (1) Describe how vulnerable community members experience toxic environments, and (2) Explore the strategies vulnerable community members themselves employ and seek out from professionals to achieve resilience in these environments. METHODS: The research design for this study was prospective and cross-sectional. We surveyed 62 Milwaukeean African American women of childbearing age and their close networks of support from predominantly low-income census tracts, and we engaged 14 women in a community conversation on their experiences, strategies, and desires generated from living in Milwaukee during a lead contaminated drinking water crisis. RESULTS: Participants were aware and concerned about toxic poisoning in their environment, especially as it affects their children. Nonetheless, societal factors constrained their levels of preparedness and action in response, including around chestfeeding, breastfeeding, expressed milk feeding, and artificial feeding methods. CONCLUSION: Lactation providers and other health professionals can better support at-risk families by integrating their perspectives into dominant frameworks for information-sharing, preventative resource distribution, and supporting community self-determination.

First Food Justice: Infant Feeding Disparities and the First Food System.

Breastfeeding and first foods--including human milk and infant formula--affect us all as individuals and a society of eaters and feeders. They also shape us in part through having significant effects on community health and well-being, workplace strength, and environmental integrity. In addition, we all affect breastfeeding and first foods. Society, the economy, and the environment constrain and enable breastfeeding success, for example, and they often do so differently by race, class, and other social categories. It is important we recognize and address these realities for our own individual interests as well as those we as a citizenry hold in common.