For feeding babies, health experts agree that nothing is better than breast milk. It contains anti-bodies that reduce rates of childhood illnesses. Breastfeeding also protects mothers from certain ovarian and breast cancers. While more American women are nursing their babies now than anytime in the last fifty years, the United States still has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the developed world.
Recent studies show that babies who are breastfed are less likely to develop ear infections, respiratory illness and diarrhea. Babies are born to be breastfed! For more than a year, TV, radio and billboards have been carrying that slogan throughout the country. The campaign messages are really targeted to women of childbearing age, which ranges from teens all the way through the 30s.
Dr. Feldman-Winter says the campaign also encourages immigrants and women of different ethnic and cultural groups to embrace their own breastfeeding tradition. We are trying to encourage women to preserve the culture of their native countries and continue to breastfeed.
The Babies Are Born to be Breastfed campaign has helped encourage what some see as a culture change. The campaign is really important in changing the perspective on breastfeeding for the country.
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