IBCLC Detailed Content Outline: Clinical Skills / Public Health and Advocacy Focused CERPs - Section VII E

Mihaela Nita- MD, IBCLC, medical doctor (since 2007), specialized in pediatrics and International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (since 2011), worked mainly to develop the profession of IBCLC in Romania. Organizer of the first IBCLC Day in Romania, is the co-founder and president of Romanian Lactation Consultant Association, member of ELACTA. Active in the field of lactation, organizing conferences, events, support groups, 90 hours training courses, CERPs accredited courses, fundraising events. On behalf of the Romanian Lactation Consultant Association, Mihaela Nita started the first volunteer work in the country, in the NICU of Marie Curie Emergency Children Hospital in Bucharest that led to the idea of implementing a human milk bank. Mihaela is passionate about training, advocating for the IBCLCs role and making a change for mothers, society and medical system in the field of lactation.

Naomi Bar-Yam, PhD, ACSW, has been working in maternal and child health for over 30 years as an educator, researcher, advocate, and writer. She is the immediate past president of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA) and the founding director of Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast, which provides safe donor milk to hospitals and families throughout the northeastern US. An expert on access to perinatal health care and policies that support breastfeeding, she has been a consultant to the Centers for Disease Control (on a panel that created “The CDC Guide to Breastfeeding Interventions”), to the United States Breastfeeding Committee (developing an issue paper addressed to CEOs and legislators on breastfeeding and the workplace), and to the March of Dimes (developing educational material for women and families who are medically and socially vulnerable to high-risk pregnancy). She also developed a curriculum for hospital personnel about combining breastfeeding with their work. She reviews articles submitted to the Journal of Human Lactation, Breastfeeding Medicine, and other publications related to breastfeeding, milk banking, and access to perinatal child care. As Executive Director of Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast, she is thoroughly versed in the technical, procedural, and ethical aspects of milk banking. She often speaks at professional conferences, hospital staff trainings, and grand rounds about milk banking and breastfeeding policies.

Dr. Amal Omer-Salim is the Executive Director of the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA). She is a nutritionist with a Ph.D. from Uppsala University, Sweden. Her areas of expertise are nutrition, breastfeeding, international health, gender, programme planning, research, and advocacy, with a special focus on Africa and Asia.

Indra Lusero is founder of Elephant Circle and the Birth Rights Bar Association. As a Queer, Genderqueer, Latinx parent rooted in the Rocky Mountain West, Indra is attuned to the importance of people on the margins and our role in leading the dismantling of oppressive systems to build a more equitable world. Indra helped pass legislation in Colorado to eliminate the shackling of incarcerated women during pregnancy and birth, to improve midwifery and birth center regulations, and to create more humane policies for families impacted by substance use. Indra also spearheaded the creation of "Birth Rights: A resource for everyday people to defend human rights during labor and birth.

Rue Khosa, AKA The Boob Boss, is the owner/founder of The Perfect Push, a lactation and parenting wellness clinic in downtown Redmond. She is a board certified family nurse practitioner, lactation consultant and a THRIVE parenting educator. Rue was born and raised Zimbabwe, where family plays a critical role in supporting expectant and new parents. This type of communal caring, called “kugarira”, helps families prepare for a new baby both emotionally and physically and guides them through the often challenging newborn period. Rue created The Perfect Push to bring that experience to Seattle. Rue began her women’s health career as a labor and delivery nurse over 10 years ago, at Washington Hospital Centre in DC. She received her graduate degree from Georgetown University, and her undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Prior to opening her private practice, Rue was a Teaching Associate in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine and an Adjunct Clinical Faculty at Northwest University Buntain School of Nursing. In July 2019, Rue was commissioned by the Mayor to the City of Redmond’s Human Services Commission. In February 2020, Rue was invited to join Washington State Hospital Association's Safe Delivery Roadmap Commission. She sits on their Birth Equity task force working on program development. She also sits on the board of No More Under, a non profit organization committed to drowning prevention and awareness. Outside of redefining the childbirth and parenting experience, Rue is a mother of two young boys with a third on the way. She lives in Redmond, WA with her husband, mother and boys.

Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, PhD, IBCLC, FAPA, 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 two peer-reviewed journals: Clinical Lactation and Psychological Trauma. She is Fellow of the American Psychological Association in Health and Trauma Psychology and Past President of the APA Division of Trauma Psychology. Dr. Kendall-Tackett specializes in women's-health research including breastfeeding, depression, trauma, and health psychology, and has won many awards for her work including the 2017 President’s Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Trauma Psychology from the American Psychological Association’s Division of Trauma Psychology. Dr. Kendall-Tackett has authored more than 460 articles or chapters and is author or editor of 38 books.

Amy Brown, PhD, Professor, 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.

Nekisha Killings, MPH, IBCLC, LLLL, is an experienced marketer, writer, equity strategist, and international board certified lactation consultant. After spending years in consumer-packaged goods marketing and community partnership building, followed by a decade of public relations and ghostwriting, she found her life’s work in lactation support and maternal and child health equity through her personal experiences with birth and breastfeeding. Nekisha contributed the chapter on Cultural Humility in the latest Core Curriculum for Interdisciplinary Lactation Care. She acts as equity strategist for lactation-related organizations that seek to better reach underserved communities. Recently, she co-founded Nikki & Nikki: Lactation Career Consultants, an organization dedicated to equipping aspirants of color to sit the IBCLC exam. In addition to being spouse to an active duty United States Air Force member, Nekisha also homeschools three little future world changers and enjoys writing and research on the impact of historical trauma on families’ breastfeeding experiences today.

Michelle Pensa Branco MPH IBCLC is a lactation consultant and public health advocate. In addition to her clinical practice, which has included in-hospital, outpatient and private practice settings, she advocates for improved maternal-child health practices at the local, national and global level. She has a particular interest in the impact of trauma to breastfeeding families, models of peer support to improve breastfeeding outcomes and the application of health communication principles to the promotion and protection of breastfeeding. Michelle serves as the Director of Peer Support Programs and provides clinical lactation expertise for Nurture Project International, the only international NGO focused exclusively on infant feeding in emergencies. With Jodine Chase, she co-founded a Canadian non-profit organization, SafelyFed Canada. She is also an active member of the Ontario Public Health Association’s Breastfeeding Promotion Working Group. Michelle has previously served as the Vice-Chair of La Leche League Canada, the Communications Director for the Canadian Lactation Consultants Association as well as the Toronto Coordinator of INFACT Canada. When she is not travelling for work, Michelle stays close to home, living with her family just outside Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Jessica Lee is a Staff Attorney at the Center for WorkLife Law, and co-founder of the Center’s Nursing Mothers Law Project. She works to advance gender equality in the workplace and in education, and is a nationally recognized expert on discrimination related to pregnancy and breastfeeding. Lee has provided know-your-rights resources and training on workplace supports for breastfeeding to thousands of healthcare providers, public health practitioners, and employers. She also seeks to prevent discrimination by working with institutions to draft and implement family-responsive policies.

Lee’s writing has been featured in publications ranging from Harvard Business Review and The Chronicle of Higher Education to the journals Breastfeeding Medicine and Midwifery and Women’s Health. She is a co-author of the study, Exposed: Discrimination Against Breastfeeding Workers.

Helen Gray MPhil IBCLC is Joint Coordinator of the UK Steering Group of the World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative (WBTi). In 2017 she and Clare Meynell IBCLC jointly received the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Breastfeeding from the Lactation Consultants of Great Britain (LCGB), for leading the UK’s first WBTi assessment of infant feeding policies and programmes.

Helen is an international speaker on ethics and conflicts of interest. She represents La Leche League of Great Britain on the UK Baby Feeding Law Group, which works to bring the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes into UK law. She is also Policy and Advocacy Lead for Lactation Consultants of Great Britain, and previously co-chaired LCGB’s Communications Team.

Helen’s background in anthropology and human evolution has influenced her interest in how breastfeeding, and the way we nurture our babies, are influenced by both human biology and culture.

Her current advocacy focus is the need for strong policies to protect infant feeding in emergencies. She currently serves on the Advisory Panel for a London Food Resilience research project with Oxford University.

In her spare time, she can be found sculling on the River Thames.

Tamara Drenttel Brand holds an MA in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona and a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) from the American University of Beirut. She spent 10 years in the Middle East, where she worked as a public health practitioner, infant and maternal health consultant and an IBCLC. She has supported breastfeeding dyads from all over the world both in private practice and as a volunteer. In 2011, she founded and still actively facilitates “Mama 2 Mama Beirut Breastfeeding Support,” the largest breastfeeding peer support network in the Middle East (currently at 25k+ members). Additionally, she founded Galactablog, a professional group for lactation specialists and those aspiring-to-be (currently at 4.7k+ members) and has authored several articles for La Leche League’s monthly leader publications in both the Middle East and Ireland.

She is currently an international speaker on the topics dealing with breastfeeding in the Middle East, innovative lactation teaching strategies, working in resource-scarce settings, providing culturally sensitive lactation support, developing and implementing peer counselor training programs, mast cell disease and other related topics. Due to her own chronic health conditions, she has a special interest in educating others about mast cell disease and supporting those with chronic illnesses. She currently resides in a seaside village in Ireland with her family.