How the War Against DEI May Kill a Breastfeeding Program

Disparities in the region’s maternal care practices could be exacerbated if gutted by federal health cuts.

In the empty halls of the Gary Neighborhood Services building on Grant Street once stood the Milky Way Cafe, a casual space created for breastfeeding moms to meet, share supporting resources, and consult with professionals. But the clinic, one of the few resources in the city that was customized for maternal and infant care, has been gone for over half a decade. 

It’s one of the reasons why Erishawn Griffin — a Gary mom of three and former professional lactation counselor with the Northwest Indiana office of the federal supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children, known as WIC — has made a reputation for herself as a go-to person for questions from curious moms. As resources for breastfeeding mothers in the area have disappeared over the years, she said, information about it has become less accessible.  

“Even in the breastfeeding community, with the WIC program, a lot of the programs that were presented in Gary just didn’t get a lot of advertisement,” she said, adding that people have not engaged with the resources as much as they hoped. “Resources were trying to bud, but unfortunately, I just don’t think they caught on the way that everyone was hoping for, and it just kind of faded.”

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Studies have shown that increasing breastfeeding rates in Black communities is an important public health strategy to address the high infant mortality rates that plague the nation. Breastfeeding is an important nutritional source for babies that strengthens their immunity to respiratory illnesses. As projects encouraging breastfeeding in Gary, like the former Milky Way Cafe, have closed, support for breastfeeding mothers has plunged in the region. Fortunately, a new program that aims to help curb breastfeeding disparities in the region is set to come to Gary — if it can withstand anti-DEI efforts by the Trump administration. 

Methodist Hospital, Gary’s only hospital, recently initiated a partnership with CHAMPS, Communities and Hospitals Advancing Maternity Practices, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded program to help hospitals increase exclusive breastfeeding rates, improve maternity care, and decrease racial disparities in both. But the Trump administration has asked federal agencies to eliminate programs that address racial disparities in a wide array of settings, including health care.

Glynis Adams, assistant director of perinatal services at Methodist Hospital, said the partnership would be good for improving the area’s breastfeeding and infant mortality rates. Adams said their goal is to make the hospital more “baby friendly,” as defined by the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative. The hospital’s goal is to increase breastfeeding rates to 80% between its Southlake and Northlake campuses, where it currently hovers at about 40%. Methodist also currently has two lactation counselors between both locations.

“They have the resources, they have the experience, they have the knowledge,” said Adams, after meeting with CHAMPS staff during their visit to Methodist Hospital. “They hit all the hot topics that we needed to make a successful change.”

Currently, topics like breastfeeding are covered as a part of the hospital’s prenatal classes. Additionally, patients, especially high risk mothers, are assigned an OB navigator, a registered nurse with experience in obstetrics, to help women through their prenatal and postpartum care, provide informative resources, and community outreach. 

With the CHAMPS partnership, hospital staff will receive training, strategize more ways to share their resources in the community, and offer training for the public as well, Adams said. Currently, 100 hospitals nationwide are enrolled in the three-year program, which offers training focusing on equity and safety, including “10 steps to successful breastfeeding,” prenatal and postpartum care, and community support. 

Several studies have suggested there are many breastfeeding benefits for the mom and baby, showing fewer infections, improved quality of sleep, lower obesity rates, decreased risk of asthma, and higher IQ’s in infants and children. However, the Black community isn’t properly exposed to the benefits of breastfeeding because of stigma and gaps in information, Adams said. 

“Back in the day, only poor folks breastfed. To remove ourselves from those stigmas, we chose to bottle-feed. But over the last, I would say, at least 20 years, that stigma has totally changed,” she said. “I don’t think education and communication about the benefits, like everything else, gets to our communities as quickly.”

Black communities continue to experience the highest burden related to poor maternal and infant health outcomes, including higher rates of preterm birth, low birth weight, maternal and infant mortality, and lower breastfeeding rates. In Lake County, home to Gary, the infant mortality rate is 7.3 per 1,000 births, which is higher than the state’s 6.7 infant mortality rate, and higher than the national rate of 5.4 per 1,000 births, according to the Indiana Department of Health.

The 2023 report also said the state’s Black infant mortality rate is even higher, 13.2 per 1,000 live births. In essence, Black infants in Indiana not only die at the highest rates in the state, but at one of the highest rates in the nation.

Black women’s limited access to breastfeeding education and lactation counselors worsens infant health disparities, according to a 2021 breastfeeding equity study co-authored by Kimarie Bugg, CEO of the nonprofit breastfeeding equity organization Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere (ROSE). ROSE, based in Atlanta, is helping CHAMPS to launch in Gary and offers training and educational resources to reduce Black breastfeeding disparities. 

Overall, Indiana’s breastfeeding rates have increased over the past decade, increasing from 67.8% in 2012 to 73% in 2022, according to the latest Indiana WIC breastfeeding report available. However, while breastfeeding initiation rates have increased across all racial groups, including Hispanic, Asian, and white, Black breastfeeding initiation rates remain the lowest among all racial groups, at nearly 75%. Similarly, Black women on average breastfeed for shorter durations than other racial groups.

Without the CHAMPS program, Gary, a city already in need of more maternity care resources, could see these disparities worsen. 

The CHAMPS program, funded by a CDC grant and led by Boston Medical Center’s Center for Health Equity, Education, and Research (CHEER), is at risk under the Trump administration’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and federal funding, according to Bugg. A spokesperson for CHAMPS declined to comment on the record. 

As public health agencies like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and CDC are flagged to remove now-banned words like “diversity,” “science-based” and “fetus” from their program budgets, projects like CHAMPS are increasingly vulnerable to cuts.

Bugg said that the future of ROSE and other organizations like hers is uncertain. She has been instructed to change a lot of the language in ROSE’s budget.

“So we are definitely navigating the current hostile environment, and we have to be very careful with that, because this is a CDC grant,” Bugg said. “So right now, to tell you the truth, we are up in the air and looking for updates. Every day, we have been instructed to change a lot of language. We will continue, you know, to do the work that we applied to do, but right now we’re just not sure if we will receive the funding.” 

Bugg added that the CHAMPS project depends on a year-to-year renewal process, spanning from October to September, but with changes in the administration, a renewal is not guaranteed. However, she believes in the tenacity and resilience of the Black community to weather uncertain storms. 

“This is not the first time that Black people have gone through stuff like this. Our ancestors definitely had it worse,” she said. “We are extremely resilient. We are tired of having to be so resilient, but we are.”

Until then, Gary moms like Griffin are looking forward to Methodist’s partnership with CHAMPS, saying that the initiative is exciting — and necessary.

“I’ll be excited to see how that will affect the community, for sure, with them [Methodist] being such a huge part of the medical care here in the area,” she said.