Over the next two weeks, Next City will unroll short profiles of 77 people, places and ideas that have changed cities this year. Together, they make up our 2012 Disruption Index. Forefront subscribers can download the Index in full as a PDF, complete with beautiful designs and graphics by Danni Sinisi. Readers who make a $75 donation to Next City will have a full-color printed copy of the Index mailed to them.
Of all the problems facing cities today, how women feed their newborns wouldn’t seem to be a big one. And yet statistics show that the decision of whether or not to breastfeed can mean the difference between increased risk for cancer and diabetes and even infant mortality. Yet in urban communities, and particularly black communities, that health risk is not well known.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, less than half of black babies are breastfed, compared to nearly three-quarters of white babies. And black babies are twice as likely to die before their first birthdays than white babies. For former Detroit public school teacher and mother Kiddada Green, the connection is easy to see.
So, in 2007, Green founded the Black Mothers’ Breastfeeding Association, a non-profit that hopes to counteract those numbers. Green has been evangelizing breastfeeding among the black population in Detroit, hosting support groups and leading seminars on the techniques and benefits of natural feeding. And now she’s taking her mission beyond Detroit, visiting states across the country to meet with mothers, black and otherwise, in urban areas with low rates of breastfeeding and high rates of medical issues. This year, Green’s group won a $100,000 grant from the Kellogg Foundation to keep spreading the word. With this funding, Green will be able to help even more parents to raise healthy babies that can grow up to be healthy people, breaking a cycle of sickness that has for too long pervaded urban communities. If Green succeeds in her mission, many premature deaths will be avoided — the ultimate act of disruption.
Nate Berg is a writer and journalist covering cities, architecture and urban planning. Nate’s work has been published in a wide variety of publications, including the New York Times, NPR, Wired, Metropolis, Fast Company, Dwell, Architect, the Christian Science Monitor, LA Weekly and many others. He is a former staff writer at The Atlantic Cities and was previously an assistant editor at Planetizen.