Kellogg Foundation Award

Mothers’ Milk Bank of Mississippi receives W. K. Kellogg Foundation grant for outreach

February 14, 2019

Mother's Milk Bank of Mississippi is please to announce the receipt of a three-year $172,500 grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to be used for establishment of new milk depots and outreach to potential donor mothers in areas of Mississippi not currently served by a convenient depot. Our project, titled More Donor Moms and More Depots: Broadening Our Reach, will also include awareness campaigns to increase the general public's awareness of human breast milk donation as a way to save lives of premature babies. Healthcare provider educational offerings will include the roles that obstetricians, midwives, pediatricians, nurses, and lactation consultants can play in the process of insuring a continuous supply of safe human donor milk for these infants.

Mississippi has one of the highest prematurity rates in the nation, and as such, has a huge need for human donor milk. Human donor milk is now standard of care for the feeding of premature babies in Neonatal Intensive Care Units, because it prevents necrotizing enterocolitis (intestinal gangrene), a devastating condition unique to premature babies. Human donor milk is also needed for full term and older babies with some metabolic syndromes and digestion issues, for whom it is life-saving. As Mississippi's only non-profit milk bank accredited by the Human Milk Banking Association of North America, the Mothers' Milk Bank of Mississippi is uniquely suited to applying evidence-based standards that insure the safest supply of human donor milk, while maintaining the highest levels of nutrients and immune factors possible in pasteurized donor human milk.

Statistically, there are approximately 1,500 breastfeeding mothers per year in Mississippi who are healthy enough and who have enough extra milk to share with babies in need. Currently, only about 125 mothers per year are donating. This project seeks to reach mothers who are unaware that their extra milk can save lives, and encourage them to donate by making the process more convenient and establishing additional convenient drop-off locations. According to Anna Higginbottom, Deputy Executive Director of MMBM, "We will also be conducting Milk Drives in our current and new depot locations, so that prospective donor moms can complete the screening paperwork, have their blood work drawn, and bring their milk, all at the same time and place."

The mission of the Mothers' Milk Bank of Mississippi is to screen donor mothers, then collect, pasteurize, and dispense donor human milk by physician prescription to premature and ill infants in Mississippi, according to the guidelines of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America. We are a 501c3 non-profit organization. For more information, visit www.msmilkbank.org.

The Kellogg Foundation is based in Battle Creek, Michigan, and works throughout the United States and internationally, as well as with sovereign tribes. Special emphasis is paid to priority places where there are high concentrations of poverty and where children face significant barriers to success. WKKF priority places in the U.S. are in Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, and New Orleans; and internationally are in Mexico and Haiti. For more information, visit www.wkkf.org.