ABA health professional seminar series - 2025 programs

Registrations open

Welcome and introduction

Dr Jennifer Hocking

Who cares? Unpacking the role of care in clinical practice

As health professionals we care for patients, women, families, mothers, babies and children, but what does this mean? How does our care matter? This presentation will challenge your ideas about what care is and help you to reflect on how you care for others in your day-to-day work. We will try to define what care is and how it can be performed well. We will also examine the quite unique situation where clinicians are providing breastfeeding support and care for two people – mother and baby - who are also in a close relationship with each other. How can we make sure that our care makes a difference?

Karen Graham

The Breastfeeding Systems Change Project: an 11-year report card from Interior Health, British Columbia, Canada

The process of achieving change is complex. Commitment to breastfeeding best practice from maternity care providers and family care physicians is critical. The Baby-Friendly Initiative (BFI) designation process addresses best care requirements but is expensive and challenging to implement across large geographical areas. Given Interior Health’s 215,000 sq km area, this is one of the challenges our project faced. Our approach started with art to heighten general breastfeeding awareness. Our initial goal? To improve breastfeeding awareness and knowledge from both the public and Interior Health administrators. Our next steps included journey mapping with mothers and health care providers and a physicians’ round table to identify gaps in care and services. This led to the development of new programs and resources to improve breastfeeding care including an online site for physicians to access breastfeeding resources and referrals; a breastfeeding phoneline; three breastfeeding videos; a pilot project of swivel bassinets in hospitals to increase mum and baby togetherness; and a breastfeeding toolkit for local governments plus our last and most important resource, the Physician Breastfeeding Guide. The presentation will share our change in the journey and its outcomes.

Morning tea

Dr Treasure McGuire

Hypertension? Diabetes? Epilepsy? Depression? Infection? Benefits versus risks with medication usage during pregnancy and lactation

Pregnancy and breastfeeding present unique challenges for managing medical conditions due to the dual need to safeguard maternal health while protecting foetal or infant development. The balance between effective treatment and minimising medication risk is essential. This presentation addresses the safety profiles of medication used for the management of hypertension, diabetes, epilepsy, depression and infections.

The Marri Gudjaga team

Marri Gudjaga: Breastfeeding support for Aboriginal women

The Marri Gudjaga Project explores and evaluates how to effectively support Aboriginal women with breastfeeding. This project has included training and evaluating Aboriginal Peer Support Workers as well as yarning with women and health professionals about ways to support breastfeeding. Through the collaborative efforts of an Aboriginal videography team, one of the participating services (Gadhu) and the Australian Breastfeeding Association, we have also developed breastfeeding videos. The Marri Gudjaga Project is funded by the MRFF.

Lunch

Dr Treasure McGuire

Maternal analgesia, anaesthesia and diagnostic contrast investigation: breastfeeding implications

Maternal analgesia and anaesthesia during the peri- and postpartum period represent a critical phase for both maternal recovery and the initiation of breastfeeding. In addition, the choice of contrast media for maternal diagnostic investigations can have significant implications for breastfeeding outcomes. This presentation explores the complex interplay between maternal clinical care and supporting optimal breastfeeding outcomes.

Dr Nishamanie Karawita

Creating breastfeeding influencers and engaging community support: lessons from a breastfeeding promotion program

Many families stop breastfeeding earlier than planned and require more support to sustain breastfeeding. This presentation discusses the development and implementation of our multifaceted community-based breastfeeding promotion and support strategies to address the unique barriers and challenges being experienced within population groups. The strategies include training of bicultural workers in breastfeeding mentoring, community awareness raising, creating breastfeeding supportive environments, reorienting health services, development of posters with breastfeeding messages in community languages and a social media campaign using storytelling technique.

Closing remarks

PLEASE NOTE: ABA reserves the right to change the program and speakers if they are unavailable due to illness, injury or unforeseen circumstances and events. All views and opinions of the speakers are not necessarily the position held by ABA. 

Breastfeeding among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women

This presentation will include an overview of breastfeeding among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, and discuss some key issues related to supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander women to breastfeed, including intergenerational trauma.

Forewarned is forearmed: breastfeeding aversion response and other common breastfeeding challenges

This presentation shares key findings from Melissa’s PhD research on Breastfeeding Aversion Response, and findings about common breastfeeding challenges. Results show that while challenges are ubiquitous, appropriate support enables women to overcome them, leading to a positive overall experience. Insights from a national survey of over 5000 respondents inform strategies for healthcare professionals to empower women and foster a supportive breastfeeding environment.

It takes a (virtual) village

Babies require 24/7 care. Mothers need access to timely breastfeeding information and support, particularly in the early weeks of establishing breastfeeding. Feedback indicates new mothers are increasingly reluctant post COVID-19 to take their baby out and about prior to their first immunisations. To provide mothers with easily accessible support during this critical period the Australian Breastfeeding Association created the Virtual Village family with antenatal, newborn and ongoing breastfeeding support available online via interactive webinars. This presentation will provide an overview of the Virtual Village program offerings, how they are designed to meet the needs of mothers with newborns in particular and will share feedback received from mothers engaging in the Virtual Village sessions.

Trying to understand iron

Midwives and others will be familiar with the management of maternal iron levels during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. Others may know about the debates that rage on infant iron stores and deficiency in the breastfeeding child’s first year. This presentation will dig deep into these aspects of practice and explore the challenges of providing evidence-based information and care for women in pregnancy and for parents of breastfed babies in their first year of life. A little bit of biochemistry and a lot about approaches to care.

The Physician Breastfeeding Guide and the Swivel Bassinet’s Trial: a deep dive

To improve breastfeeding care, Interior Health developed new programs and resources to address gaps identified during consultation and evaluation processes. This presentation shares more detail on what has become an important project resource - the Physician Breastfeeding Guide. The resource was developed over 5 years with intensive collaboration of about 50 health care providers and will be released in early 2025. The goal of this guide is to enhance the involvement of physicians in breastfeeding care, and to increase their role as advocates. The presentation also shares more on our pilot project with swivel bassinets and the outcomes of this trial.

Special additional presentation to be announced soon!