GOLD Speakers

Naomi Bar-Yam, PhD, MSW

• Country: United States

Biography:

Naomi Bar-Yam, PhD, ACSW, has been working in maternal and child health for over 30 years as an educator, researcher, advocate, and writer. She is the immediate past president of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA) and the founding director of Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast, which provides safe donor milk to hospitals and families throughout the northeastern US. An expert on access to perinatal health care and policies that support breastfeeding, she has been a consultant to the Centers for Disease Control (on a panel that created “The CDC Guide to Breastfeeding Interventions”), to the United States Breastfeeding Committee (developing an issue paper addressed to CEOs and legislators on breastfeeding and the workplace), and to the March of Dimes (developing educational material for women and families who are medically and socially vulnerable to high-risk pregnancy). She also developed a curriculum for hospital personnel about combining breastfeeding with their work. She reviews articles submitted to the Journal of Human Lactation, Breastfeeding Medicine, and other publications related to breastfeeding, milk banking, and access to perinatal child care. As Executive Director of Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast, she is thoroughly versed in the technical, procedural, and ethical aspects of milk banking. She often speaks at professional conferences, hospital staff trainings, and grand rounds about milk banking and breastfeeding policies.