About Us
Vision
Breastfeeding disparities among African American women will be significantly reduced, and 82% of their babies receive breast milk at birth.
Mission
ROSE was founded as a community-based nonprofit to address breastfeeding disparities in Black communities.
ROSE is a national nonprofit organization with a mission to serve communities, through a continued focus on centering the breastfeeding needs of Black families and impacting broader maternal, infant, and family health outcomes across the nation.
ROSE works to normalize breastfeeding by providing resources and networking opportunities for individuals and communities. As a national expert, and in partnership with communities and key partners, we build equity in maternal, infant, and family health through culturally competent training, education, advocacy, and support.
ROSE uses a socio-ecological model to couch its programs and services to achieve overall improvement of maternal, infant, and family health outcomes.
Updated Dec. 2023
Values
Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere (ROSE), Inc. seeks to enhance, encourage, support, promote, and protect breastfeeding throughout the USA, by working to reduce the breastfeeding disparities among African American women, and to strengthen the health of their babies and families through, mentoring, training, breastfeeding support groups, social support, outreach, education, legislation, health policies, and social marketing.
Theory
Community-Based Participatory Approach Integrating the Social Cognitive Theory
Utilizes an ecological perspective recognizing the multiple levels in health problems, while accounting for the dynamics between personal factors, environmental factors, and human behavior.
History
Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere, Inc. (ROSE), was founded in July 2011 by three Atlanta-based women, who have now worked in the field of maternal and child health (MCH) for more than 45 years. As working mothers, they experienced how worksites left women to feed their babies in locations where employees would not think to eat their lunch, including bathrooms, basements and storage rooms. From her early clinical training in a hospital maternity unit, to her work as a nurse practitioner, Kimarie Bugg, DNP, MPH, FAAN, observed how the perinatal healthcare system failed to teach and encourage breastfeeding in Black communities, and, in fact, often impeded it. Since its founding, ROSE has grown to a network that includes physicians, nurses, nutritionists, social workers, peer counselors, and parents.
In August 2012, when ROSE received its 501(c)3 nonprofit status, it began with a mission to enhance the overall mental, spiritual and physical health of African American women, babies and their families by working collaboratively to encourage, promote, support and protect breastfeeding throughout the United States. ROSE sought to achieve this by training healthcare providers on culturally effective techniques. Its primary goal was to increase the percentage of African-American women breastfeeding, and thereby reach the target breastfeeding goal outlined in Healthy People 2020.
ROSE currently provides outreach, education, and technical assistance to perinatal providers to encourage them to adopt practices that support breastfeeding in their policies. Interventions may be as simple as recommending lactation volunteers to work on their maternity wards, or as involved as helping administrators to train staff or develop policies for breastfeeding support.
ROSE's founders were at the forefront of challenging perinatal systems that were harming Black families, and supported the Black breastfeeding movement in achieving hard-won gains. ROSE is constantly growing its network so that it is best-positioned to fulfill its founding mission. In order to sustain the achievements gained from the Healthy People 2020 campaign, there must be nationally-focused programs that involve a range of stakeholders: breastfeeding women, individuals, family, health providers, and community and public policymakers.