Carolina Breastfeeding Institute

Dr. Miriam Labbok

The Carolina Breastfeeding Institute was founded on 1 January 2006. Thanks to a generous donor who chooses to remain anonymous, the Institute was launched with an endowed chair and resources to permit immediate action in support of research, service, and training in public health as well as the clinical skills that are necessary for increased support to enable every woman to choose and succeed in optimal infant feeding.  Today we are pleased to be funded by several donors including others:  the John Rex Foundation, the Duke Endowment, Kate B Reynolds Charitable Trust as well as several federal entities.

The Institute is well placed at UNC, in the oldest state university in the United States, since the health of North Carolinians is our primary goal. We are also fortunate to be in the Maternal and Child Health Department under the leadership of Dr. Bert Peterson. The highly respected Department of Maternal and Child Health, with its state, national and global interests, serves as the perfect home for this new center of excellence, which supports the mother/child dyad as the focus for research, teaching and service.

For more about the Institute, please see our brief CBI Brochure. In addition, I maintain a blog: Enabling Breastfeeding: The Mother-Child Dyad to cover current events that impact breastfeeding success.

On a personal note, I am sincerely grateful to have the opportunity to be the first Institute Professor and Director, and to be among such excellent colleagues.  I am especially grateful to our Dean Barbara Rimer, and to our Department Chair Bert Peterson for his vision for the MCH Department that includes this Institute.

With best wishes for the future,