The United States Breastfeeding Committee has many recent activities and accomplishments to celebrate, including our new five-year strategic plan!

Read on for highlights of completed actions, ongoing efforts, and other plans for 2009:

Advocacy

• The Breastfeeding Promotion Act has a companion bill in the Senate for the first time, and we’re planning several related activities including a joint Congressional briefing on November 4 and an advocacy day at our January 2010 conference. Don't forget to ask your Congressperson to co-sponsor the bill (update 9/22/09: 29,100 letters to Congress sent so far)!
• We collected signatures for a joint letter about Healthy People 2020 (HP2020) Topic Areas, and we are coordinating breastfeeding advocates’ testimony at the HP2020 public meetings in October and November.
• Health care reform is in full swing: download our briefing paper, and be sure to contact your Representatives!
• The Joint Commission has released their new perinatal care core measure set that includes exclusive breast milk feeding; a USBC task force is formulating related guidance for hospitals.
• We’re preparing a petition to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about false and misleading infant formula advertising.
• We sent a letter to the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) with several recommendations regarding the safety and efficacy of infant formula.
• We submitted comments on CDC’s Maternity Practices in Infant Nutrition and Care (mPINC) survey, and encouraged comments from members and coalitions.
• We’re continuing to collaborate with MomsRising and other partner organizations' in advocacy for paid family leave.

Coalitions

• We’re planning the much-anticipated Third National Conference of State/Territory/Tribal Breastfeeding Coalitions—Empowering Coalitions: Power Tools for Change, to be held January 23-25, 2010, in Arlington, Virginia.
• We created a regional structure for the state breastfeeding coalitions, to facilitate networking and collaboration and a representative communication link with USBC.
• We received funding from CDC for several coalitions support activities, including enhanced support for the bi-monthly coalitions teleconferences, expansion of the Coalitions Electronic Forum, webinars on coalitions-specific topics, a “State of the State Coalitions” report, and support for the new coalitions regions.

Media/PR and Promotion/Publications

• Visit the World Breastfeeding Week 2009 Web page to download our flyer on breastfeeding and emergencies, and learn more about related activities and resources. An Emergencies task force is now forming to coordinate new initiatives to collaborate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Commission on Children and Disasters.
• We sent a joint letter to the editor of the Atlantic in response to “The Case Against Breast-feeding”, co-signed by 32 national and international organizations; our supporters sent another 1,000+ letters through our online letter to the editor tool.
• A task force is nearing completion of a revised Obesity Prevention position statement, and a new task force is forming to write a Workplace Accommodations position statement.
• Planning is underway for dissemination and promotion of USBC’s new "Core Competencies in Breastfeeding Care for All Health Professionals."
• We’re preparing for the launch of USBC’s new e-newsletter in November: join or update your contact info on our News and Action Alerts list!
• Our redesigned and rebuilt Web site went live in May: explore the Site Map!
• We’re supporting a partner organization’s innovative breastfeeding ad campaign.

2008 was also an exciting and productive year for our work together:

• We hosted a successful Second National Conference of State/Territory Breastfeeding Coalitions in January 2008, attended by 295 coalition leaders from every state, as well as several territories and Indian Nations.
• We launched our new online donations and advocacy platform, which has allowed us to expand our e-mail supporter network from under 1,000 in August 2008 to over 25,000 in September 2009, and counting...
• Our Breastfeeding Petition to President Obama has garnered 13,000 signatures; we’ve sent them to the White House and continue to use them to support conversations with policymakers.
• We launched the new Coalitions Mini-Grant Program with funding from the CDC, to provide $18,000 to support the work of state/territory/tribal breastfeeding coalitions.
• We began a program of monthly press releases on breastfeeding-related topics.
• We published new issue papers and a position statement on "Safe Use of Donor Human Milk.”
• We submitted comments on WIC reauthorization, and encouraged comments from others.