Purpose of the Symposium
1) Discuss the benefits of the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative (MFCI) for hospitals, clinics, mothers, infants, and clinicians
2) Provide a forum for discussion among nurses, doctors, doulas, childbirth educators, midwives, administrators and others on the challenges and opportunities of implementing mother-friendly care in the clinical or hospital setting.
3) Provide a forum for dissemination of evidence-based best practices for maternity care.
4) Support clinics, hospitals and community-based programs in developing plans of action to shift the thinking in their organizations towards mother-friendly care and develop multidisciplinary coordinated networks of maternity care providers.
5) Practitioners and students of maternity care will obtain an objective understanding of the collision of worldviews and belief systems when the medical and midwifery models of maternity care intersect.
6) Participants will describe how the perinatal community as a whole can best collaborate to provide optimal care for mothers and infants based on the principals of the MFCI and the evidence-based practices available as outlined in the 10 steps of the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative (MFCI).
Principles of the MFCI are:Luz Chacón, MPH, CLE has over 25 years of experience developing and implementing community health programs, primarily serving low-income women and families within at-risk communities. She has worked for a variety of nonprofit agencies including a large community clinic, two different local WIC agencies, two statewide agencies, and several community based organizations. Her work has primarily focused on maternal and child health, breastfeeding promotion, reproductive health, nutrition, wellness, and environmental health. She earned an MPH from California State University, Northridge in 1998, was a founding member of Breastfeed LA (formerly known as the Breastfeeding Task Force of Greater Los Angeles), and completed the Women’s Policy Institute fellowship in 2004, which gave her the opportunity to work on a bill that aimed to ban formula marketing in California hospitals. Her expertise includes program development and management, training and capacity building, curriculum and materials development, case management, home visitation, community outreach, and policy advocacy. After successfully establishing a large home visitation program serving moms and babies in the areas of Metro and South Central Los Angeles, she assisted with the expansion of this program, called Welcome Baby, to 13 other hospitals throughout the county by providing training, technical assistance and ensuring fidelity to the model that she helped establish. She is passionate about empowering women to make informed choices and working to create systemic change that supports community health, especially for underserved, disenfranchised populations. She is also the proud mother of two sons, ages 24 and 17, who were both breastfed long-term.
Luz Chacon is on The Association for Wholistic Maternal and Newborn Health Advisory Committee