Healthy Babies UK
Increasing access to breastfeeding support for women experiencing health inequity. Our work to help spread and scale Healthy Babies UK has now come to an end.
Project
overview
- Healthy Babies UK supports families before birth and through the early days by providing antenatal and postnatal care to improve the health and wellbeing of mothers and babies.
- Antenatal sessions focused on breastfeeding support were provided to women experiencing health inequity.
Partners involved
Health Innovation South West supported the scale and spread of Healthy Babies UK’s antenatal and postnatal support sessions, and helped the organisation develop its product portfolio for different health and care audiences.
Project
detail
Delivery of equitable maternity services and access to maternity services poses significant challenges in the South West due to a high proportion of people living in rural and coastal areas.
Addressing these challenges in maternal and neonatal care is a key focus for the Partnership. To support this mission, we collaborated with Healthy Babies UK to deliver targeted antenatal sessions for women facing health inequities in deprived areas of mid Devon.
The antenatal sessions gave women a better understanding of what to expect around giving birth and breastfeeding, and focused on increasing the numbers of mothers who initiated and maintained breastfeeding for as long as they and their child wanted.
A breastfeeding peer supporter training course was also offered to women who had attended the antenatal course and had lived experience of health inequity.
The Partnership also helped Healthy Babies UK develop its substantial portfolio of products into a range of value propositions for different potential customers such as GPs, maternity leads and community partners.
This in turn is expected to support the growth and development of the business in the next few years.
Impact from this work
- 100% of the women who participated in the sessions said that the brief antenatal course helped them to breastfeed their baby.
- 80% of the women said the course helped them breastfeed their baby for longer than if they had not attended the course.
- Peer support groups allowed women to socialise and to offer and receive support from others living with shared experiences.
