UAlbany Research Featured on Romper.com

ALBANY, N.Y. (November 27, 2017) — Research conducted by a team of UAlbany scientists from the Center for Human Services Research (CHSR) was featured this week on Romper.com, a site directed towards millennial moms.

Romper.com receives over 3.6 million hits per month, and is directed towards millennial mothers.

The story, “Meet the Breastfeeding Support Workers Who Provide In-Home Help to Moms Who Need it Most,” showcased the findings of a study that involved more than 3,500 pregnant women participating in Healthy Families New York (HFNY), a state-wide home visiting program.

Sandra McGinnis, senior research scientist at CHSR, and her team found that the number of times a home visitor (also known as a family support worker) addresses the subject of breastfeeding during a home visit directly correlates with the likelihood that mothers will attempt, or re-attempt, to breastfeed.

McGinnis said that social determinants play a big role in a mother’s decision whether to breastfeed.

“Even though [breastfeeding] is a mother’s instinctual behavior, there are huge disparities due to race, age and most likely social class,” McGinnis said in the Office of Communications and Marketing’s original article. “It’s a tremendously difficult task to encourage [at-risk mothers] to breastfeed, but sending the right message does help improve these statistics.”

The story on Romper includes the stories and experiences of mothers who participated in the program, as well as those of family support workers. It was written by Gianluca Russo, a student intern in the Office of Communications and Marketing.

The website is a spinoff of the online magazine, Bustle.com, which has a readership of over 50 million.

For more news, subscribe to UAlbany's RSS headline feeds