UK Nursing's Dr. Linares named 2021 Cultural Changemaker by United States Breastfeeding Committee
Congratulations to the University of Kentucky College of Nursing’s Ana Maria Linares DNS, RN, IBCLC for being named a 2021 Cultural Changemaker by the United States Breastfeeding Committee.
The Cultural Changemaker award is presented annually to individuals who are actively involved in collaborative efforts to protect, promote, and support breastfeeding in culturally distinct communities through service to a cultural coalition or community-based organization and are members of the cultural group that they serve.
“I am honored to be the recipient of the Cultural Changemaker Award from the United States Breastfeeding Committee,” said Dr. Linares. “Since I started my work as an immigrant bicultural/bilingual nurse researcher in the US, it took my attention the racial and ethnic variations in breastfeeding duration and exclusivity in the US, which contribute to lifetime disparities in maternal and child health outcomes and costs. Working with the Latinx community has been so rewarding. I know that through effective early interventions to engage immigrant Hispanic mothers in sustained exclusive breastfeeding, disparities in health risk behavior and associated diseases among Latinx can be significantly reduced.”
Dr. Linares is an associate professor at the UK College of Nursing and has a program of research focused on changing the landscape of maternal-child health by developing nursing interventions to increase breastfeeding rates. She is currently conducting several studies in Kentucky to assess the effectiveness of community-based, family-centered breastfeeding interventions among Hispanic women. She is also currently leading a multi-site international study to define the cultural determinants of breastfeeding in Latino American countries.
Dr. Linares will officially receive the Cultural Changemaker recognition during the June 9 virtual awards ceremony for the 2021 National Breastfeeding Conference & Convening. View a complete list of the USBC 2021 awardees.
The United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC) is an independent nonprofit organization that was formed in 1998* in response to the Innocenti Declaration of 1990, of which the United States Agency for International Development was a co-sponsor. Among other recommendations, the Innocenti Declaration calls on every nation to establish a multisectoral national breastfeeding committee comprised of representatives from relevant government departments, non-governmental organizations, and health professional associations to coordinate national breastfeeding initiatives. The USBC is now a coalition of more than 100 organizations that support its mission to drive collaborative efforts for policy and practices that create a landscape of breastfeeding support across the United States.
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