IBCLC & COVID Online Course(s) & Continuing Education
Access the latest clinical skills and research for IBCLC & COVID for IBCLC/Lactation Consultants professional training. These IBCLC & COVID online courses provide practice-changing skills and valuable perspectives from leading global experts. This IBCLC & COVID education has been accredited for a variety of CEUs / CERPs and can be accessed on-demand, at your own pace.
COVID-19 Guidance for Maternal and Newborn Care: Who’s Doing What and Why
Karleen Gribble (BRurSc, PhD) is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Western Sydney University.
Her interests include infant and young child feeding in emergencies, marketing of breastmilk substitutes, parenting and care of maltreated children, child-caregiver and caregiver-child attachment, adoption reform, and treatment of infants and young children within the child protection, immigration detention, and criminal justice systems.
She has published research on these subjects in peer-reviewed journals, provided media commentary, contributed to government enquiries, provided expert opinion for courts, and engaged in training of health professionals, social workers, and humanitarian workers on these subjects.
Karleen is an Australian Breastfeeding Association Community Educator and Breastfeeding Counsellor. Since 2010 she has been a member of the Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies Core Group and has been at the forefront of the development of policy, training and research in the area of infant and young child feeding in emergencies.
Topic: Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies: Background, Best Practice, and What You Can Do - [View Abstract]
Topic: Milk Sharing: Comparative Risks and Biomedical Ethics - [View Abstract]
Where women are suspected or confirmed as having COVID-19, hospital practices have ranged from isolating infants from their mothers and proscribing the provision of expressed breastmilk to supporting mothers to have skin-to-skin with their infants, early initiation of breastfeeding, direct breastfeeding, and rooming in day and night.
This presentation will briefly summarize the evidence base for breastfeeding and close mother-infant contact in the COVID-19 pandemic. It will also describe the variance in government and professional development guidance around the world, anomalies in guidance, which guidance documents have had the most influence internationally, and provide examples of good and poor practice in guidance development. Finally, this presentation will discuss the importance of emergency planning for infant and young child feeding and the need to learn from the mistakes of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Has COVID-19 Affected Breastfeeding Promotion and Support Practices?
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.
Mothers, families and professionals faced extraordinary challenges that differed depending on resources and local considerations during the COVID Pandemic. Isolation measures, fear and other issues menaced in many countries, the important quality of perinatal care and breastfeeding support measures that BFHI hospitals offer. Though WHO recommendations regarding perinatal care and breastfeeding support for mothers and families during the Pandemic were published early, these recommendations were not followed everywhere. In some countries, fear for possible mother and/or infant exposure or for professional's exposure might precluded mother-infant closeness and skin-to-skin contact. Direct breastfeeding was not recommended by some health authorities in some countries or in some regions. With the endorsement of the BFHI Network Coordinating Committee I designed and conducted a survey among the members of the BFHI Network. The survey was meant to collect information about how the Pandemic had been faced in different settings/countries. The objective was to learn how to move forward and how to improve the way we fought the pandemic in the perinatal area and protected mothers and infants, while preserving humanization and quality of care in the near future and for other pandemics that might come. The objective of this talk is to share the results of this Survey.
