The Healthy Start Program from the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Maternal Child Health Bureau (MCHB) focuses on improving health outcomes before, during, and after pregnancy, and reducing racial/ethnic differences in rates of infant death and adverse perinatal outcomes. The Healthy Start EPIC Center is a national training and technical assistance center operated by the National Institute for Children’s Health Quality and funded by HRSA. The Healthy Start EPIC Center offers several training opportunities supporting Healthy Start programs, staff, and community partners to build their capacity to promote breastfeeding among the families they serve. Scholarship funding is provided for Healthy Start program staff to attend a breastfeeding education certificate  program for community health workers.

Advocacy opportunity: Contact the Healthy Start program and the Healthy Start EPIC Center to suggest that IBCLCs be utilized in their breastfeeding improvement efforts to provide training, write educational materials, and be included in community-based Healthy Start programs as referral sources for acute and chronic breastfeeding problems that exceed the capacity of community health workers to rectify.