Mariah Jiles (left) and Lupita Ambriz (right), 2nd-year MCAH students (expected 2023), are part of the UCSF California Preterm Birth Initiative serving as Breastfeeding Analysis Graduate Student Researchers. Their roles focus on identifying barriers to breast/chestfeeding experienced by Black parents in San Francisco.
UCSF California Preterm Birth Initiative is a collaborative that seeks to center the lived experiences of BIPOC in research and examine underlying structures that place certain communities at special risk of adverse birth outcomes. PTBi has been contracted by the San Francisco County Department of Public Health to generate a landscape analysis of human milk feeding in the county, that takes into account strengths, resources and the needs of community members. To do this work, the team first identified stakeholders in the San Francisco area that authentically connect with Black birthing people and are currently working to understand the current barriers to lactation feeding. Their hope is to use these findings to guide coalition meetings that will be held during this summer.
As Graduate Student Researchers with PTBi, Mariah and Lupita are able to support this landscape analysis in a multitude of ways. In previous months, they collaborated on developing a literature review of breastfeeding in San Francisco and organizations working to support Black families with their lactation goals. They contributed to assisting with participant recruitment, and now that they have identified key stakeholders, they are conducting one-on-one interviews and focus groups to better understand barriers to success and strengths inherent in this community. Each week Mariah and Lupita meet with PTBi and our co-PIs to discuss their findings from these conversations. As this analysis continues, they will also assist in developing qualitative research protocols, coding transcripts and identifying main themes for the final report and assist with the planning of coalition meetings this summer.
What are some tools/skills you have gained from being a Berkeley MCAH student (including your summer practicum experience) that you bring to this position?
Mariah:
Being a Berkeley MCAH student has allowed me to approach this work with a number of transferable skills and advantageous experiences. While this is my first time examining breast/chestfeeding concerns professionally, I am able to bring previous perspectives from my MCAH coursework to critically examine community-wide, structural barriers to successful breast/chestfeeding. Additionally, my summer practicum experience has been an amazing source of research acumen. For my summer practicum and continuing as a Graduate Student Researcher, I am assisting with the Abundant Birth Project Evaluation Study. This position has enabled me to gain substantial interviewing experience, holding 50+ hour-long surveys with Black and Pacific Islander pregnant people in the Bay Area. This position has also provided me with the ability to participate in qualitative analysis of our findings. Coming into this new role with PTBi, I felt confident and comfortable in my ability to gain needed insight from stakeholder interviews to further our landscape analysis and am looking forward to further utilizing my qualitative research abilities.
Lupita:
As a graduate student researcher at PTBi, I feel like I constantly have many opportunities to apply the knowledge and skills I have gained as a Berkeley MCAH student. Frameworks commonly discussed during my MCAH Foundations course like Life Course Theory and Social Determinants of Health, guide me to think critically as a researcher. Other courses like Program Evaluation, trained me to curate thoughtful questions when assisting in creating questionnaires for stakeholder interviews. Experiences like my summer practicum with Monterey County Health Department, granted me the opportunity to interview various community-based programs. This experience allows me to be a strong and experienced interviewer at PTBi, which is one of my major responsibilities as a GSR. Both my coursework and summer practicum experiences have made me a confident student researcher and a strong contributor to the PTBi team.
How does breastfeeding relate to your own passions/interests in MCAH?
Mariah:
This is an exciting new research interest for me in maternal and child health! One of the major considerations that drew me to this position was the description of disparities in breast/chestfeeding rates between Black and white communities Currently, only 67% of Black mothers are feeding their infants human milk three months after birth in San Francisco, compared to 91% of white mothers. As a public health student who is committed to ameliorating maternal health disparities that affect BIPOC communities, I am excited to be working on a project that works to achieve breast/chestfeeding equity.
Breast/chestfeeding and this analysis also align with my interests in MCAH because of the long, harrowing history Black people have experienced with breast/chestfeeding in the United States. Historically, our community was exploited to breast/chestfeed as wet nurses and denied autonomy over their bodies. I am greatly interested in further exploring how this legacy can impact breast/chestfeeding practices today.
Lupita:
As someone who earned a B.S. Nutrition Science, I have always had a very strong interest in nutrition during pregnancy and infancy. I became very fascinated with nutrition among MCAH populations when I learned how adequate nutrition during these critical growth periods can positively impact parents and infant’s life trajectories. With all these interests in mind, I found the PTBi GSR position aligned with many of my MCAH goals.
Most recently I earned my Certified Lactation Consultant (CLC) certification, as I am committed to supporting parents who wish to feed their infants human milk, in hopes of mitigating some of the barriers that lead to late lactation initiation and early lactation cessation. Something that has been reinforced during my GSR position with PTBi is that there is not a lot of diversity among lactation consultants, and I am thrilled to be contributing to this field. Assisting with the breastfeeding landscape analysis has been foundational to me, as it has helped me understand the specific disparities that disproportionately affect people of color, making me a better public health professional and lactation consultant.