The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) has named Martha’s Vineyard Hospital (MVH) a Baby-Friendly Hospital. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) launched this global program to recognize hospitals and birthing centers that offer top-quality care for infant feeding and mother/baby bonding, and encourage breastfeeding. Martha’s Vineyard Hospital is the eighth hospital in Massachusetts to earn the Baby Friendly Hospital designation.
“Some have called breastfeeding the single most powerful and well-documented preventive means available to healthcare providers to reduce the risk of common causes of infant morbidity,” Joyce Capobianco, nurse manager of the MVH maternity department, said this week.
According to the federal government’s Baby-Friendly Guidelines, “[Breastfeeding leads to] significantly lower rates of diarrhea, otitis media, lower respiratory tract infections, Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, childhood leukemia, necrotizing enterocolitis, and sudden infant death syndrome occur among those who were breastfed.” Breastfeeding, the guidelines say, also improves the health of the mothers. Baby-Friendly USA is the accrediting body for BFHI in the United States. BFHI announced the designation of the Island hospital in a news release.
To win the title, MVH completed a rigorous development, planning, and implementation schedule, culminating in an on-site assessment by BFHI in September. BFHI requires hospitals to have a written breastfeeding policy, to train staffs to execute the policy, to educate mothers, and to help mothers begin breastfeeding in the hour immediately after birth. Breastfeeding instruction for mothers is also required.
The BFHI guides require that the “health care delivery environment should be neither restrictive nor punitive, and should facilitate informed health care decisions on the part of the mother and her family … [and] should be sensitive to cultural and social diversity.”
“Earning this designation was a hospitalwide effort,” president and CEO Joe Woodin said, “and I couldn’t be more proud than I am of everyone involved.”
The entire accreditation process took about three years, beginning with a challenge grant from a private foundation (which wishes to remain anonymous, according to hospital spokesperson Rachel Vanderhoop) for the seed money to register Martha’s Vineyard Hospital’s intention to implement the initiative. The hospital committed to maintaining the designation.
The private foundation also gave a second grant to keep the process moving forward. Farm Neck Foundation also contributed to the effort.
To learn more about Baby-Friendly USA, go to babyfriendlyusa.org.