by Catherine Hine, CEO & Sarah Turner, Chair
Many of the challenges women and families face when feeding a baby are shared across communities. Sleepless nights, recovering from birth, concerns about milk supply, conflicting advice, returning to work and finding the right support affect families from every background and circumstance. However, evidence that Black women experience significant inequalities in maternity care is crystal clear. MBRRACE-UK, the independent programme reviewing maternal deaths across the UK, continues to report that Black women are around three times more likely to die during pregnancy or shortly after birth than White women.
Whilst infant feeding support is only one part of maternity care, inequalities on such a massive scale raise questions about how maternity services listen to, understand and work for Black women and families.
The recent Ockenden Review of maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals found repeated failures to listen to women and involve them in decisions about their care. Ockenden confirmed that women and families from minoritised ethnic backgrounds were particularly disadvantaged. The findings show that care is shaped not only by clinical treatment, but by whether people are heard, respected, and supported.
Against this backdrop, Black Breastfeeding Week focuses on the experiences of Black women and families while celebrating Black contributions to infant feeding support. This year’s theme, “We All We Got: 15 Years of Community Care and Collective Power”, celebrates the role of Black communities in supporting families through shared knowledge, encouragement, and practical help. It reminds us that alongside facing inequalities, Black women have helped build trusted sources of support that benefit many families.
There is no single Black experience and no single model of support that works for everyone. Whatever form it takes, women and families should be able to access support they trust, engage in ways that feel right for them and find information and encouragement that helps them feed their baby. For some Black women, that may include connecting with other Black women who share similar experiences alongside wider services available to all families. Others may prefer those wider services alone, or a combination of both.
This is, however, not unique to infant feeding. Research from The University of Toronto involving Black communities reported strong community engagement, trust, and benefits in a wide range of health programmes for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and stroke. The wider lesson here is that services work best when they are shaped with, not just for, the people who use them.
Public health professionals describe this approach as key to proportionate universalism, a principle developed by Professor Sir Michael Marmot. In simple terms, support should be available to everyone, recognising that some families may need something different to benefit from it in the same way.
Our role is to help families access safe, supportive, evidence-based infant feeding support. We care deeply about getting that support right. Black Breastfeeding Week underlines the central importance of listening to families, understanding where experiences differ and learning from the knowledge and experience within communities. That makes support stronger for all families.
As two white women leading BfN, we cannot speak from the personal experience of Black mothers. What we can do is work hard to ensure that through BfN, Black women and all women have access to relevant, trusted information and safe, supportive services. Black women have long been leaders, advocates, peer supporters, and sources of support within their own communities. Black Breastfeeding Week celebrates this knowledge, care, and leadership.
Our responsibility is to listen, learn and ensure that the information and support we provide reflects what families need. Every mother and family who turns to BfN, and our peer supporters who deliver that support, has their own story, experiences, and perspective. The range of knowledge and experiences helps shape support that is relevant, trusted, and useful to all mothers and families. Good support starts there.