Breastfeeding & Health Online Course(s) & Continuing Education

Dia has written and/or edited over a dozen books for adults and children. Her passions in life include promoting the concepts and practices of attachment parenting, breastfeeding and safe infant sleep. She is founder and president of two publishing houses—Platypus Media and Science, Naturally! Their books have won numerous awards and have been translated into Spanish, Dutch, Hebrew, Chinese, Russian, Turkish, French and Korean. Dia has led workshops at healthcare, education and parenting conferences across the country. She is the mother of three adult children and lives in Washington, DC.

Joy MacTavish, MA, IBCLC, RLC, ICCE is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Registered Lactation Consultant. She is the owner of Sound Beginnings, which provides in-home consultations and education on lactation, babywearing, and more. Her background as a birth and postpartum doula, and childbirth, newborn, and parenting educator, inform her compassionate and evidence-based support of new families in the greater Seattle area. Joy holds a Master of Arts in Cultural Studies, graduate certificate in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, and two Bachelors degrees from the University of Washington. She serves as adjunct faculty at the Simkin Center for Allied Birth Vocations at Bastyr University where she created the Breastfeeding for Doulas course. Joy is passionate about her family, social justice, and continuing education.

Dr Virginia Thorley is a pioneer of the breastfeeding movement in Australia. She was the first breastfeeding counsellor in Queensland and in 1985 was in the first cohort in the world to certify IBCLC. In 2008 she was one of the first Fellows of the International Lactation Consultant Association (FILCA). She has two Research Higher Degrees in History (MA and PhD) and her current research interests include influences on mothers' infant-feeding decisions, wet-nursing, milk-sharing and milk banking. Dr Thorley is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of HPRC at the University of Queensland. She is the author of several books and book chapters and most recently was co-editor, with Melissa Vickers, of The 10th Step & Beyond: Mother Support for Breastfeeding. She has presented at conferences on five continents.

Barbara Morrison, PhD, CNM is an associate professor in the Janice M. Riordan Distinguished Professorship in Maternal Child Health at Wichita State University School of Nursing, Wichita, KS, USA. Dr. Morrison’s mission is to advocate, educate and inspire health care reform to enhance physiologically and ecologically appropriate care for the mother-newborn dyads especially as it relates to establishing breastfeeding, frequent Kangaroo Care (KC) and holding, and optimal attachment. Dr. Morrison’s research interests include the impact of breastfeeding and KC on psycho-neuro-endocrine development of newborns and parents, and implementing best evidence-based breastfeeding and attachment practices in hospital birthing and postpartum units and in the community. Dr. Morrison shares her research and passions through presentations, writings, radio shows and her website www.DrBarbCNM.com.

Dr. Kendall-Tackett is a health psychologist and International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and the Owner and Editor-in-Chief of Praeclarus Press, a small press specializing in women's health. Dr. Kendall-Tackett is Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Psychological Trauma and was Founding Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Lactation, a position she held for 11 years. She is Fellow of the American Psychological Association in Health and Trauma Psychology, Past President of the APA Division of Trauma Psychology, and a member of APA’s Publications and Communications Board.

Laurel Wilson, IBCLC, CLE, CCCE, CLD is a TEDx and international speaker, author, pregnancy and lactation expert, and consultant. She served as the Executive Director of Lactation Programs for CAPPA, the Childbirth and Postpartum Professional Association for 16 years and now is on the Senior Advisor Board. She served on the Board of Directors for the United States Breastfeeding Committee from 2016-2019. She also is on the Advisory Board for InJoy Health. She owns MotherJourney, focusing on training perinatal professionals on integrative and holistic information regarding pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding. She has her degree in Maternal Child Health: Lactation Consulting and is an internationally board certified lactation consultant. As the co-author of two books, The Attachment Pregnancy and The Greatest Pregnancy Ever, original Editor of the CAPPA Lactation Educator Manual, and contributing author to Round the Circle: Doulas Talk About Themselves, she loves to blend today’s recent scientific findings with the mind/body/spirit wisdom. Laurel has been joyfully married to her husband for nearly three decades and has two wonderful grown sons, whose difficult births led her on a path towards helping emerging families create positive experiences. She believes that the journey into parenthood is a life-changing rite of passage that should be deeply honored and celebrated.

Ruth Lucas, PhD, RNC, CLS, received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from George Mason University (1986) and her Doctor of Philosophy of Science (2011) from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Based on 20 years of supporting women and infants to initiate breastfeeding, her research focuses on the biobehavioral mechanisms of breastfeeding, such as breast and nipple pain. Dr. Lucas and her team conducted a pilot randomized control trial (RCT) as part of the Center for Accelerating Precision Pain Self- Management (CAPPS-M) (P20NR016605). The pilot RCT tested the feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy of a breastfeeding self-management (BSM) intervention for breast and nipple pain during breastfeeding and found the BSM intervention significantly reduced breast and nipple pain and is associated with pain sensitivity polymorphisms. Her published work describes management of pain during breastfeeding, a clinical indictor of infant breastfeeding behaviors, and a biomedical device to measure breastfeeding in real time.