BVL Online Congress

Alex has been a lactation consultant in the Washington, DC area since 2010. In addition to running her private practice, Bethesda-Chevy Chase Lactation Consultants, Alex cares for breastfeeding moms and babies at Hirsch Pediatrics in Rockville, MD. After earning her master's in English Literature and teaching for several years, Alex met two extraordinary people that inspired her to enter the field of lactation: her daughters. Alex has worked at Inova Fairfax Hospital and Sibley Memorial Hospital as an in-patient lactation consultant. In 2015, she graduated summa cum laude from the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Nursing with a Bachelors of Science in Nursing. Alex is committed to increasing awareness for impaired mammary organ development (IMOD) and impaired mammary organ function (IMOF).

Professor Amy Brown is based in the Department of Public Health, Policy and Social Sciences at Swansea University in the UK. With a background in psychology, she has spent the last thirteen years exploring psychological, cultural and societal influences upon infant feeding decisions in the first year. Her research seeks to understand how we can shift our perception of how babies are fed away from an individual mothering issue to a wider public health problem – with societal level solutions. Dr Brown has published over 60 papers exploring the barriers women face in feeding their baby during the first year. She is a mother to three human children and three book babies: Breastfeeding Uncovered: Who really decides how we feed our babies, Why starting solids matters, and The Positive Breastfeeding Book: Everything you need to feed your baby with confidence. She is a regular blogger, aiming to change the way we think about breastfeeding, mothering and caring for our babies.

Joke graduated as a Midwife in 2006 and a Master in Midwifery in 2008. She obtained the IBCLC lactation consultant degree in 2011. She graduated in specialised applied pharmacology in 2015. She has experience as midwife and lactation consultant in her own primary care practice, lecturer at the University College Brussels, head editor of the Flemish Journal of Midwifery and board member of the Flemish Organisation of midwives and ELACTA. At the moment Joke is also a researcher on COVID-19 vaccination during lactation at the University of Brussels.

Trained as an educational Scientist I first became a volunteer for VBN (a Dutch organisation similar to LLL). In 2000 I became an IBCLC and have worked as such in private practice ever since. I work and live in the Amsterdam area in the Netherlands. In my practice I see a wide variety of mothers and babies from different cultural backgrounds (although mainly in relatively good economic circumstances) and age, from ex-preemies at home to 3-4 year olds. Apart from face-to-face breastfeeding help I also teach. This ranges from antenatal breastfeeding workshops for parents to in company trainings for professional organisations. I find joy in assisting parents and babies to find ways to work together. And in showing healthcare professionals that providing good breastfeeding care is an interesting and rewarding aspect of their profession.

Kymeng Tang is a PhD student at KU Leuven. He develops immersive playful systems to allow expecting parents and wider society to experience breastfeeding, and currently explores how to demonstrate breastfeeding in a virtual reality environment. Kymeng obtained a Bachelor of Science in computer science with highest distinction under a government-funded-merit scholarship from the Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 2016. While pursuing his bachelor’s degree, he was awarded several merit-exchange scholarships to study abroad. Between 2015 and 2016, Kymeng also worked as a part-time research assistant at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. Shortly after obtaining his bachelor’s degree, he was awarded a scholarship to pursue a master’s degree at KU Leuven, Belgium in 2016. In 2017, Kymeng was honored to have his bachelor’s degree awarded and congratulated by the prime minister of Cambodia. In 2018, he obtained a Master of Science in Electronics and ICT Engineering Technology (Magna Cum Laude) from KU Leuven, where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. In his most recent publication, “Information and Communication Systems to Tackle Barriers to Breastfeeding: Systematic Search and Review”, he highlights shortcomings in current information technology to support breastfeeding, and outlines design opportunities to turn breastfeeding into a collective and societal rather than individual effort.

I am a medical doctor, with a specialization in pediatrics, a Masters degree in Public Health and Nutrition from the University of California in Berkeley, and a PhD from the University of Valencia, Spain. I have devoted more than 20 years now to breastfeeding Medicine and I am a member of ILCA and the ABM for many years now. I have been member of the Breastfeeding Committe of the Spanish Pediatric Association and its national coordinator from 2009 to 2012. In 2013, I became the National Coordinator of IHAN (the association for the Humanization of Birth Assistance and Breastfeeding Protection) which is the Association that runs the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative and the Baby Friendly Community Initiative in Spain. I have represented Spain in the BFHI Network and I am currently a member of the Coordinating Committee, External Relations and Internal Relations Committee of this Network. All these being voluntary work, my present job is as the Director of the first Breastfeeding Clinic in the Spanish National Health care service, which is located in Valencia. I am the proud mother of two breastfed children and one breastfed granddaughter.

Nancy Mohrbacher was born and raised in the Chicago area, where she lives today. She is a board-certified lactation consultant who has been helping nursing mothers since 1982. Her breastfeeding books for parents and professionals include Breastfeeding Answers Made Simple and its Pocket Guide; Breastfeeding Made Simple(with Kathleen Kendall-Tackett); Working and Breastfeeding Made Simple; and Breastfeeding Solutions and its companion app for Android and iPhone.

Nancy currently contracts with hospitals to improve breastfeeding practices, writes for many publications, and speaks at events around the world. Nancy was in the first group of 16 to be honored for her lifetime contributions to breastfeeding with the designation FILCA, Fellow of the International Lactation Consultant Association.

In 2013, I started teaching pharmacology and pharmacotherapy in the Bachelor of Science for Midwifery (VIVES – Kortrijk) as well as in the post-academical course organized by the Flemish Midwives Organization (VBOV). This is a specialty course for midwives to obtain the degree of Prescribing Midwife. Since 2018, I also teach this course at the Karel De Grote Hogeschool in Antwerp.

After completing the Clinical Chemistry Cycle in the Netherlands, I started teaching “laboratory data for first-line healthcare” at the Master of Science in Pharmaceutical Care at Ghent University. This class includes various topics, with a personal specialty in anaemia, dose adjustments in renal insufficiency and point-of-care/home testing. At the Free University of Brussels, I teach a class on medication review in the final year of the Master of Science in Pharmaceutical Care. During this course we give special attention to implementation strategies to complete this process. During the academic year of 2018-2019, I developed and counselled a new interdisciplinary course at the Ghent University. In de Bachelor of Science of Pharmaceutical Sciences, we introduced a new learning path together with the food and dietetics (Hogeschool Gent).

I am currently part of a project by the Belgian Centre of Pharmacotherapeutic Information, commissioned by the Belgian government. In this project we develop standard dosing strategies for general practitioners and pharmacist to improve rational drug use. Besides, I am an active member of a working group on medication review to implement this service in the Belgian healthcare setting.

Since 2018 I have been a member of the working group. Nutrition in the early years of life" of the Flemish Professional Organization of Midwives. Together with midwives, pediatricians and dietitians, we set up campaigns to give infants the best start in life from an early age. In 2019, the first two manuals I wrote about this theme were also published in this context: Bottle feeding & Breastfeeding. These handbooks will be used at various universities of applied sciences from the 2019 - 2020 academic year. Care providers working in the practice can also purchase these practice-oriented handbooks to support their practice.