Dr. Lavonne Moore is a Black midwife that uses community-based research to improve the health and birth outcomes of Black mothers.
“Over the years, I've found that breastfeeding is an important tool to address many of the things that impact Black maternal socio-economic determinants of health, chronic disease, and all the other factors that impact our relations to maternal health,” she said.
Dr. Moore says the Chocolate Milk Club is a for-us by-us model, which defies culturally exclusive language barriers within breastfeeding education.
“We go to the community to ask them what they think is the issue and the solution, and then come back to develop a model based on that research,” said Dr. Moore. “And so Chocolate Milk Club is a culturally specific model that provides education and support for African American women around breastfeeding. We want to help women stay breastfeeding, especially that first year of life. We have different events that support the whole family to support that woman in continuing to breastfeed as long as possible.”
This year marks the Chocolate Milk Club’s 6th annual public celebration.
“Every year we have Chocolate Milk Day during the Black Breastfeeding Week, which is the last week in August,” explained Dr. Moore. “Our annual event is for our community so that people can see how much chocolate milk - how many breastfeeding families - are really out there, and it’s a lot more than what people think. We want to celebrate that work because it is natural but it's not always easy for Black women to breastfeed.”
This year Chocolate Milk Day will take place in Minneapolis at Fairview Park on August 27th from 3-5pm.