Facilitators and Barriers to Initiation of Lactation

What makes a birthing parent able to successfully initiate breastfeeding? After this course, you will look at that question in a whole new way.

This course brings together the vast landscape of factors that impact the initiation of breastfeeding, from individual factors specific to one dyad all the way through variables operating at institutional, cultural, and even global levels.

Instructor Sarah Stilling, MSN, APRN, CPNP-AC/PC, IBCLC, uses the lens of “facilitators and barriers” to examine practices and decisions at every level from individual to global, explaining which ones push the dyad toward a successful lactation outcome and which ones operate against a successful outcome.

She draws on her expertise as a pediatric nurse practitioner certified in both primary and acute care. In her role as a Nursery Hospitalist in a large hospital system in the United States, which sees over 14,000 births a year, she is uniquely positioned to observe the factors that lead to successful initiation of human milk feeding.

Throughout this seven-part course, you will learn through Stilling’s comprehensive explanation of sophisticated concepts from the world of sociology and anthropology as well as medicine, combined with visual illustrations that make the concepts easy to understand. The lecture is punctuated with breaks to summarize key points, so you’ll retain what you learn. Opportunities to complete engagement activities allow you to test your understanding and apply your new knowledge right away.

Evidence based and packed with the most current research, this course provides a unique perspective, opening your eyes to factors you hadn’t considered and to the relationships between factors in a new way–one that is sure to broaden and enrich your practice and your advocacy, with individual families, within your setting, and in the world.