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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES UCLA OF BERKELEY DAVIS IRVINE LOS ANGELES RIVERSIDE SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO THE ALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA SANTA CRUZ 1868 June 15, 1998 CENTER FOR HEALTHIER CHILDREN, FAMILIES, AND COMMUNITIES SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH BOX 951772 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1772 TEL: (310) 206-1898 Mrs. Hilary Clinton FAX: (310) 825-3868 The First Lady White House Second Floor, West Wing Washington, DC 20502 Dear Mrs. Clinton, We, at the Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities, would like to invite you again to speak at The National Breastfeeding Policy Conference planned to be held in Washington DC on November 12 and 13, 1998. The goal of the conference is to improve breastfeeding initiation and duration rates in the United States through identifying existing leadership breastfeeding programs and introducing a new set of policy, educational, research, and media-related activities. The Policy Conference is designed to expand the potential stakeholders and organizations interested in promoting breastfeeding. While there is no more traditional topic in maternal and child health than breastfeeding, there are several new trends and significant new information that demand re-examination of this age-old topic in order to re- evaluate the best avenue to an affirmative set of policy initiatives: -Some new and traditional barriers to successfully initiate and maintain breastfeeding include employment and work place policies, hospital policies and practices, presentation in the media and managed care policies. Some model programs addressing these barriers to breastfeeding are emerging; -New research regarding the benefits of breastfeeding in the United States has recently surfaced. For instance, evidence regarding the impact of breastfeeding on cognitive development and on attachment behavior and emotional development suggest more soundly the presence of multiple factors influencing human growth and development; -The transformation of the health care delivery system to managed care with a focus on population-based health could provide new opportunities to support breastfeeding as a population-based preventive intervention as well as cost control strategy