Breastfeeding: Turning the Tide for Birth and Breastfeeding 2020

Dr. Kendall-Tackett is a health psychologist, IBCLC and the owner and editor-in-chief of Praeclarus Press, a small press specializing in women's health. Dr. Kendall-Tackett is editor-in-chief of the journal, Psychological Trauma and was founding editor-in-chief of Clinical Lactation, a position she held for 11 years. She is Fellow of the American Psychological Association in Health and Trauma Psychology, past president of the APA Division of Trauma Psychology, and a member of APA’s Publications and Communications Board.

Dr Meghan Azad holds a Canada Research Chair in Developmental Origins of Chronic Disease. She is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health at the University of Manitoba. Her research program (www.azadlab.ca) is focused on the role of infant nutrition and gut microbiota in the development of asthma, allergies and obesity. Dr. Azad co-leads the Manitoba site of the CHILD Study (www.childstudy.ca), a national pregnancy cohort following 3500 children to understand how early life experiences shape lifelong health. She is directing multiple projects related to lactation and infant feeding practices in the CHILD cohort, including integrated studies linking human milk composition and gut microbiota with epigenetic profiles and clinical phenotypes. Dr. Azad is an active member of the Breastfeeding Committee of Canada and the Winnipeg Breastfeeding Network, and she serves on the Executive Council for the International Society for Research in Human Milk and Lactation.

Prof. Amy Brown directs the research centre ‘LIFT”: Lactation, Infant Feeding and Translation at Swansea University in the UK. She has spent the last sixteen years exploring psychological, cultural and societal barriers to breastfeeding, alongside experiences of perinatal mental health and caring for babies. She is particularly interested in how we can shift our perception of breastfeeding and infant care from an individual mothering issue, to a wider public health problem. Professor Brown has published over 100 research papers and is author of 9 books including her most recent ‘Covid babies – how pandemic health measures undermined pregnancy, birth and early parenting’.

Amanda Donnett is a clinical psychologist working in private practice on the southside of Brisbane at Redlands Psychologists. She predominantly works with women and their families experiencing difficulties in the perinatal period, including fertility difficulties, birth trauma, pregnancy and neonatal loss, and the transition to parenthood. Amanda is also the founder and director of Mothers, Milk & Mental Health which, in conjunction with CAPERS Bookstore, has been providing health professional training workshops for midwives throughout Australia. The themes of this year’s workshops have been perinatal mental health and cultivating compassion in maternity care.

Luke is a registered pharmacist at Flinders Medical Centre and practitioner fellow at Flinders University and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute. Luke’s research is focused on improving women’s and children’s health through the development and promotion of safer, more effective and personalized approaches towards medicines use. Luke is currently leading an active research program focused on improving the identification and pharmacological management of lactation insufficiency. Luke is the principal investigator of a large clinical trial evaluating different doses of domperidone for the treatment of lactation insufficiency following preterm birth.

Caroline Homer is Co-Program Director of Women and Children’s Health and Co-Head for the Women’s and Newborn’s Health Working Group at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne. She also continues a long association with the University of Technology Sydney as a Visiting Professor of Midwifery. Caroline has been involved in the development and evaluation of midwifery and maternal and newborn health services in Australia and in a number of other countries in the Asia Pacific region, including Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Cambodia and Timor Leste.

Associate Professor Wendy Ingman is a breast biologist at the University of Adelaide, based at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Her research explores the biology of how the breast develops and functions to better understand how disease states occur, including lactation mastitis and breast cancer. Wendy’s research challenges old paradigms and explores new concepts in how the breast develops and functions to improve breast health across the life course.

Hazel is a Lecturer and Academic Course Advisor of the Bachelor of Midwifery and has completed her PhD in 2021 in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Western Sydney University. Hazel has more than two decades of experience as a clinician in nursing and midwifery, educator and researcher. Her research focusses on midwifery practice/education and women’s experience of maternity care. Hazel's work is recognised nationally and internationally, with more than 20 conference and seminar presentations including 10 as an invited speaker. Hazel has a developing publication track record as an early career researcher, with 7 peer reviewed publications and has been awarded the ACM NSW Pat Brodie research scholarship to develop a smartphone application in her PhD research. Hazel is passionate about improving support for women during pregnancy, birth and the early transition to mothering.

Amanda has a passion for womens health, including breastfeeding, and has been working in primary practice for 20 years, and in a lactation clinic for 10 of those. Amanda has a teaching background and has a Bachelor of Linguistics and a Diploma of Education. She lives in rural NSW and works as a midwife and also in her Private Family Practice and Lactation Clinic, performing antenatals, cervical sampling, vaccinations and lactation consultations. Her experience and interests are in nipple damage management, facilitating latch with dyads having difficulty, insufficient glandular tissue, relactation and facilitating poor supply, perceived weight gain issues and tongue tie.

Christine Sulfaro is the National Manager of the Milk Bank by the Australian Red Cross Blood Services. Chris’s background is nursing – she is a Registered Nurse, with post graduate qualifications in Midwifery and Perinatal Intensive Care Nursing. Chris also holds a Graduate Certificate in Clinical Management and a Master of Health Management. Chris has been with the Australian Red Cross Blood Service since June 2017. Prior to this, Chris worked at Nepean Hospital (NSW) in the NICU for 23 years – with a 5 year stint as the NUM of Children’s Ward and then 4 years as the NUM of the NICU.