What can individual citizens
do about this?

There are some specific things that you can start doing today to bring about a change in the bottle-feeding culture. Below are a just a few of them.

First, write your senators and representatives and ask them to sponsor legislation that would implement the WHO Code, require effective warning labels on formula packaging, fund general public's as well as medical professionals' education in breastfeeding and mandate hospitals become "baby friendly" to receive federal funds. Contact your state and local representatives too.

Become a National Breastfeeding MediaWatch media watcher, looking for and responding to both positive and negative portrayals of breastfeeding in the media.

Join a breastfeeding advocacy organization and support it with your funds. Contact the media regarding both good and bad messages about breastfeeding that you see. Write letters to the editor. Ask to see more positive images of breastfeeding, and to see more truthful depiction of the hazards of formula.

Contact your local school board. Ask if breastfeeding is part of the human development curriculum. If not, ask why not? After all, we teach nutrition, don't we? And aren't most of the kids in our school system going to be parents someday?

Boycott Nestle. It is the most egregious violator of the WHO Code, and should be pressured to stop pushing formula on babies who don't need it, and would be much better off without it.

Ask your own OB/GYN, family practitioner, pediatrician, HMO, health clinic, etc., what they are doing to encourage and educate mothers about the advantages of breastfeeding and what have they done to education themselves about the physiology and management of human lactation. Tell them about the lactation resources for medical professionals.

If you are a medical professional, contact your colleagues about these issues. Work towards inclusion of human lactation in medical and nursing school curricula. Do research on the effects of breastfeeding versus formula feeding on the health of your patients and publish it.

Convey a positive attitude toward breastfeeding to your friends and family. Give a "thumbs-up" to mothers you see breastfeeding in public. Breastfeed your children for as long as you and they wish to do so.

Formerly part of What can individual citizens
do about this?