BFFC Board Meeting
2026-08-24 16:00 - 17:30, 2026-09-28 16:00 - 17:30, 2026-10-26 16:00 - 17:30 (America/New_York)
Our board meets on the fourth Monday, and we open every meeting the same way: with a partner community telling us what they are working on.
That is the part we protect. The board has business to do, but the reason this organization exists is the communities doing the Ten Steps where they live. Five minutes of hearing directly from one of them is worth more than anything we could write about them.
Each meeting includes short five-minute rotating updates from partner communities and projects. We just need to know who wants the slot. Send yours to newsletter@breastfeedingcommunities.org, or reach us through the contact form. An update can be one image, one Google Slide, or a few written sentences. Tell us if you would like to join virtually when your update is shared.
If you would rather we built the slide for you, from a recent self-assessment, a photo, or a short note, say so and we will. That is not a lesser option. Send what you have.

Black Breastfeeding Week
2026-08-25 - 2026-08-31
Black Breastfeeding Week closes out National Breastfeeding Month every year, August 25 through 31.

The organizers plan the week, set the theme, and publish the events and resources that go with it. Go to them. That is where the week lives and they are the ones who built it.

Celebrate it locally. These national weeks exist to be taken up in your own community, and everything you need to do that is already published.

Building Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities: A Child Survival Strategy
2026-08-27 12:00 - 13:00
Love Anderson, co-founder of Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities, presents for the West Virginia Perinatal Partnership and the West Virginia Breastfeeding Institute.

Breastfeeding is one of the most powerful and cost-effective child survival interventions we have. It is also one of the easiest for a community to leave entirely to individual mothers, as though it were a private decision made in a private room.

This session is about what changes when a whole community decides otherwise: when employers, childcare, healthcare, and local government each take up the part of this that belongs to them.

CE/CME and IBLCE L-CERPs approved. Open registration.

Workplace Lactation Week
2026-09-01 - 2026-09-07
Workplace Lactation Week is sponsored by Healthy Horizons.

They publish substantial free resources for employers building lactation support, which is usually the hardest part of this work to move in a community. Go look at what they have.

Celebrate it locally. Use the week to move one employer where you are.

Semana de la Lactancia Latina
2026-09-08 - 2026-09-14
Semana de la Lactancia Latina is organized by the Union de Lideres de Lactancia Latino.
They plan the week, they build the resources, and they publish a week of things to do. Their work supporting Spanish-speaking families is far better than anything the rest of us could assemble on our own. Go to their page and see what they have.
Celebrate it locally. If Spanish-speaking families live in your community, this week belongs on your calendar and their resources belong in your hands.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Breastfeeding Week
2026-09-16 - 2026-09-22
Deaf and Hard of Hearing Breastfeeding Week is organized by the DC Breastfeeding Coalition.
Universal access is not an add-on to this work. A family who cannot get information in the language they actually use is a family we have not served, and this week names that plainly. Follow their page and use what they publish.
Celebrate it locally. Ask one hard question where you are: if a Deaf parent walked into your support group next week, what would happen?

Every Day is Someone's Emergency: Infant and Young Child Feeding Safety in Disasters and Daily Practice
2026-10-01 15:30 - 17:00 | Embassy Suites Concord, 5400 John Q Hammons Dr NW, Concord, NC, 28027, United States
Melinda Delisle and Corey Graywood are presenting at the NCPHA Fall Educational Conference on behalf of the SAFE Infant Feeding Team. It is a joint workshop of the Emergency Preparedness and Response section and the Women’s and Children’s Health section, which is the whole point. Those two rooms do not meet often enough.
SAFE is the national IYCF-E implementation of Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities. If BFFC is the blue skies strategy, the slow work of building communities where feeding a baby is everyone’s business, SAFE is the gray skies strategy, for the days that work gets tested.
The conference theme this year is From the Mountain to the Coast: Public Health for all North Carolinians. This state’s public health workforce is the room this has to land in. Emergency infant feeding is not a specialty topic in North Carolina anymore. After Helene it is a job description. And the title says the rest of it: the house fire on a Tuesday counts too.
The Fall Educational Conference runs September 30 through October 2 at the Embassy Suites Convention Center in Concord. Registration and the full agenda are on the NCPHA website.

When the System Stops: Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies in Appalachia
2026-10-10 13:00 - 14:00 | Oglebay Park Resort, 465 Lodge Dr, Wheeling, WV, 26003, United States
Brandi Harrison, Jayne Carpenter, and Love Anderson are on the Day Two panel at the 6th Appalachian Breastfeeding Conference.
SAFE is the national IYCF-E implementation of Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities. If BFFC is the blue skies strategy, the slow work of building communities where feeding a baby is everyone’s business, SAFE is the gray skies strategy, for the days that work gets tested.
Appalachia has already lived this. When the roads wash out and the power stays off for a week, the formula supply chain and the lactation support system fail at the same time, and the families furthest up the holler feel it first. Every emergency plan we have seen assumes someone else is handling the babies. This session is about what a community can put in place before the water rises.
Registration and the full program are on the Appalachian Breastfeeding Network website.

USBC Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies Constellation
2026-10-14 13:00 - 14:00, 2026-12-09 13:00 - 14:00
The US Breastfeeding Committee owns this constellation. The SAFE Infant Feeding Team facilitates it.
SAFE is the national IYCF-E implementation of Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities. If BFFC is the blue skies strategy, the slow work of building communities where feeding a baby is everyone’s business, SAFE is the gray skies strategy, for the days that work gets tested.
Constellations are how USBC does collective work. Member organizations commit to a shared piece of the national agenda and meet over time to actually move it. Facilitating the infant and young child feeding in emergencies constellation means this conversation now has a permanent home inside the national coalition instead of living in a handful of people’s inboxes.
Participation is open to US Breastfeeding Committee member organizations. If your organization is a USBC member and you want a seat at this table, contact USBC for an invitation. If you are not a member yet, that is the first step, and it is worth taking.

NC Breastfeeding Coalition Statewide Meeting: Year End Wrap Up
2026-10-29 12:00 - 13:00
Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities provides technical assistance to the North Carolina Breastfeeding Coalition as we pilot the implementation of the Ten Steps to a Breastfeeding Family Friendly Community.
What we learned working in local municipalities is that there are some things a local community simply cannot do on its own. Some things have to be done at the state level. This meeting is where local advocates come together to do that work statewide.
This is the year end wrap up. Come see what actually moved in 2026 and help decide what we go after next. Every level of government has a role in this, and so do you.
Meeting details and the registration link are on the NCBC meetings page.

SAFE Support and Strategic Core (S3C)
2026-11-03 13:00 - 14:30
The SAFE Team convenes S3C quarterly for the people doing infant and young child feeding in emergencies work on the ground: the ones writing the plans, sitting on preparedness committees, and answering the phone when the water goes out. SAFE is the national IYCF-E implementation of Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities. If BFFC is the blue skies strategy, the slow work of building communities where feeding a baby is everyone’s business, SAFE is the gray skies strategy, for the days that work gets tested. An emergency does not wait for a community to figure out how babies will be fed. This is where we work through what is actually happening where you are, what is stuck, and what the rest of us have already learned the hard way. Come with foundational IYCF-E knowledge from training, coursework, or response experience. Registration required.

The Invisible Infrastructure: Securing First Food in the Wake of Hurricane Helene
2026-11-09 14:00 - 15:00 | Long Beach Convention Center, 300 E Ocean Blvd, Long Beach, CA, 90802, United States
Ashley Mickelson and Love Anderson are presenting at the IAEM 74th Annual Conference and EMEX, which is the room where the country’s emergency managers actually are.
SAFE is the national IYCF-E implementation of Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities. If BFFC is the blue skies strategy, the slow work of building communities where feeding a baby is everyone’s business, SAFE is the gray skies strategy, for the days that work gets tested.
Helene showed what happens when the infrastructure that feeds infants is invisible in a plan. It is not a shelter supply line and it is not a medical annex. It is a system of people, and when it breaks there is no form for it. This session makes the case to emergency managers that first food belongs in the plan before the storm, not in the after action report.
Registration and the full program are on the IAEM conference site.

SAFE Infant Feeding Team Retreat
2026-11-18 - 2026-11-22
The SAFE Infant Feeding Team is together in person this week. The team arrives ahead of the Nurse-Family Partnership presentation on the 19th and heads home Sunday.
SAFE is the national IYCF-E implementation of Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities. If BFFC is the blue skies strategy, the slow work of building communities where feeding a baby is everyone’s business, SAFE is the gray skies strategy, for the days that work gets tested.
This is an internal working retreat, not a public event. We are listing it so you know the team will be slow to answer that week. A group that spends the year inside other people’s emergencies has to take a few days to plan its own work on purpose.

The Calm in the Chaos: Protecting Infant Nutrition from House Fires to Hurricanes
2026-11-19 | Wrightsville Beach, 1 Bob Sawyer Dr, Wrightsville Beach, NC, 28480, United States
The full SAFE Infant Feeding Team is at Wrightsville Beach for this one. Norma Escobar is presenting for the North Carolina Nurse-Family Partnership Community of Practice.
SAFE is the national IYCF-E implementation of Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities. If BFFC is the blue skies strategy, the slow work of building communities where feeding a baby is everyone’s business, SAFE is the gray skies strategy, for the days that work gets tested.
Nurse home visitors are often the only person who lays eyes on a family in the days after a house fire or a flood. That is the point of this session. Most of the emergencies that separate a baby from their feeding plan are small and local and never make the news, and the people who catch them are already in the home.
This is a session for the North Carolina Nurse-Family Partnership community of practice. Session time to be announced.
