Building Healthy Communities

Project Title

Pump It Up for Health: A Program to Increase Breastfeeding Duration and Exclusivity in Cortland County

Grant Amount

$23,859

Priority Area

Building Healthy Communities

Date Awarded

October 9, 2014

Region

Central NY

Status

Closed

Website

http://cchd.cortland-co.org/

To help foster statewide implementation of prevention activities, the New York State Department of Health issued the Prevention Agenda 2013–17 to address disease prevention and reduce health disparities.

All 58 local health departments were required to submit a Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) to the State outlining their strategies to advance the Prevention Agenda. To help energize the implementation of these CHIPs, the New York Health Foundation (NYHealth) awarded grants to health departments with the most innovative and feasible projects to improve the health and wellbeing of their communities through the Advancing New York State’s Prevention Agenda: A Matching Funds Program to Implement Community Health Improvement Plans initiative. The Prevention Agenda offered NYHealth a timely opportunity to build upon its work in diabetes prevention by helping support initiatives that tackle the root causes of diabetes and other chronic conditions, such as obesity and smoking. NYHealth awarded the Cortland County Health Department (CCHD) a grant to participate in this initiative.

CCHD used funds to focus on the Prevention Agenda priority area of promoting healthy women, infants, and children. It worked with local health care agencies and businesses to improve breast-feeding rates and duration by targeting women who were pregnant or had recently given birth and planned to continue nursing after returning to work. Breast-feeding programs were established, including one where nurses made home visits to educate women on breastfeeding and other self and infant care tactics. Nurses were also trained as certified lactation consultants. In addition to lactation support, program participants were provided with breast pumps and other educational materials. To encourage and facilitate breast-feeding in the workplace, CCHD collaborated with businesses on developing a breast-feeding policy, as well as exclusively designating a private room for breast-feeding.

See a full list of recipients.