Minutes for Tuesday 11-13-07

Ruth Sweet, WALC secretary

Shannon M. Theis, PhD

University of Wisconsin Medical School Department of Surgery, Pediatric Otolaryngology

G3/2 Clinical Science Center 600 Highland Avenue, Madison, WI 53792

Phone: 608-265-7595 Fax: 608-265-7004 Pager: 4598

Business Meeting Called to order by Becky Krumwiede

The previous minutes were accepted as written. Whenever you notice problems with the published minutes, please notify the secretary, Ruth Sweet, or one of the other officers.

Treasurer’s Report: Kathy Russell reports that we have about $10,000 in our account.

New Officers for next year: Please contact Carol Cox if you are willing to consider a WALC position. Secretary and President will be elected; we currently have one candidate for each position.

Program Committee: Donna Bisbee

Next meeting: January 18, 2008 in Milwaukee. The topic will probably be Breastfeeding after bariatric surgery. Please look for updates at our web site: www.walc.net

Donna is planning the program for our Clinic Day in May. Please contact Donna with your suggestions.

Conference Committee: Pat Gima

Membership Committee: Sandy Testin

We now have 171 members.

Scholarships Committee: Winnie Mading

There are scholarship funds available for those interested in taking a lactation course in preparation for eventually becoming an IBCLC, to sit for their first IBLCE exam, and for those planning to recertify. Please see the website for the application forms.

Mothers’ Milk Association of Wisconsin (MMAW): Ruth Sweet

The Mothers’ Milk Association of Wisconsin (MMAW) has applied for a planning grant that will help develop a human milk bank in Wisconsin. Milwaukee Children’s is working with MMAW on this. Donated milk is shipped to Ohio every month by Angel Flight.

USLCA: Winnie Mading

This new affiliate is already providing benefits for US ILCA members; we are automatically members of USLCA when we pay dues to ILCA. This group already developed a less expensive source for liability insurance. They are currently looking at the possibility of LC’s having a formal license which would simplify some issues for LC’s who do not have other licensure. They are also working on standardized staffing recommendations.

USLCA is conducting a survey on reimbursement. You can link to this from the September newsletter: http://www.ilca.org/uslca/news/September2007.pdf

The ILCA conference is July 23 – 28, 2008 in Las Vegas and November in Vienna. The IBLCE exam will be on July 28, 2008.

Legislation: Anne Altshuler
There are two versions of The Right to Breastfeed Act, which are identical. In the State Assembly the bill is called AB 104.  The Committee Chair, Leah Vukmir, RN, Republican of Wauwatosa, (the 14th Assembly District), does not personally favor this bill and therefore has not allowed it to be voted on in her committee.   In the State Senate the Right to Breastfeed Act is called SB 30 and it has been passed by the full Senate.

Because Rep. Vukmir, the legislator responsible for holding up the bill in committee, is a Republican, we need every Republican member of the Assembly to receive an AVALANCHE of letters, emails, faxes and phone calls from their constituents with one simple message: Ask Representative Vukmir to hold a committee vote on AB 104, The Right to Breastfeed Act! Winnie pointed out that when contacting our legislators, it’s important that we note that it is the baby’s right to breastfeed, not talk about the mother’s right to breastfeed.

New Business:

We again discussed the cost of mailing minutes and where we can avoid wasting money. The people who benefit most from the mailings are those who may not have a voice in these decisions. We need all of you to contact a board member, if our changes are a problem for you. We will continue to use the postal service to mail paper copies to those who prefer this service. But any lengthy materials, such as the reports from ILCA that comprise our September meetings every year will only be available on the website. If you have internet access, please help us save the WALC funds for breastfeeding promotion and provide your email address to WALC and Sandy.

We will continue to send out Invites to the WALC list serve, but you could access it directly also. You will need to establish a Yahoo identity, and I must be able to identify you as legitimate. Every so often, some stranger manages to get on our list serve, probably expecting something interesting to happen. Go to http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/WALC

This is the policy that was proposed by Sandy Testin and all attending the meeting voted to accept: “Minutes of WALC business meetings will be transmitted to all members via the WALC web site or by surface mail as requested by the member. Members will be notified by email when minutes have been posted to the web site. If there is an indication that they have not received this notice, their minutes will be surface mailed. All notes from the educational portion of the WALC meetings will be posted on the Web Site only.”

Milwaukee Breastfeeding Coalition has received a planning grant to look at barriers to breastfeeding for low income women.

Nils Bergmann, The kangaroo care guy, has been traveling in the US. We are likely to be able to have him speak at a WALC or other Wisconsin event sometime next year. Please contact Donna Bisbee or another WALC board member if you can be help arrange this. We would especially like to have him present Grand Rounds at some Wisconsin hospitals. Breastfeeding success improves when mothers and babies are routinely kept skin to skin. We need to find ways to inform physicians and neonatologists about the value of skin to skin care.