Brandi Gates is an every day, hard working bay area mother. She was born and raised in the diverse San Francisco, Bay Area. She has 3 beautiful daughters Azarriah, 12, Zaleeya, 6 and Ziyanna, 5. While earning her bachelors degree in sociology from Cal-State East Bay, she breastfed Azarriah for 19 months. She understands the time and energy it takes to exclusively breastfeed when there's many life obligations. While overcoming her own lactating difficulties with her daughter Azarriah, she realized how many bay area mothers have issues with breastfeeding and have no one to help. She became very passionate about breastfeeding and decided to pursue a career in helping and educating parents about lactation. She started working at an Alameda County WIC program. When she started there, she would support teen mothers with lactating challenges, going back to school and just being mothers at such a young age. After 3 years, her passion for helping mothers breastfeed grew. At the University of California, San Diego, Brandi earned her lactation consultant certificate in 2010 than went on to become an international board certified lactation consultant (IBCLC) providing in-home lactation consulting, support and education for families throughout the East Bay. Her purpose and passion is to help create strong, healthy and happy families. Brandi is also the lead facilitator of the Breast Friends Mommy’s Group. The group is targeted towards women of color giving them a safe space for overcoming their breastfeeding challenges.
In Alameda County, Black women are initiating exclusive breastfeeding, but only ~15% remain breastfeeding by 3 months. For impoverished Black women, especially those in their teen years or who may have less than high school education, these numbers are even lower (9-12%). There is minimum breastfeeding support for black families.
When Black mothers in West Oakland who received peer and professional breastfeeding support through Breast Friends, exclusive breastfeeding at 3 months rose to 63%. This project expanded the Breast Friends model to East Oakland while also training 12 new peer counselors (including 1 father), 24 new group facilitators, and enhancing breastfeeding messaging in the California Black Infant Health program. The project surpassed our expectations. 5 out of the 12 trained peer counselors are now working in other community organizations as Community health outreach worker, peer counselors, doulas and WIC staff.
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