About Us
Vision
Breastfeeding disparities among African American women will be significantly reduced, and 82% of their babies receive breast milk at birth.
Mission
Final Revised Version (Dec. 2018): Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere (ROSE) Inc. was founded to address breastfeeding disparities for communities of color. ROSE works to normalize breastfeeding by providing resources and networking opportunities for individuals and communities. As a national expert, and in partnership with communities, we build equity in maternal and child health through culturally competent training, education, advocacy, and support.
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
Utilizing an ecological perspective recognizing the multiple levels in health problems along with taking into account the dynamic between personal factors, environmental factors, and human behavior.
History
Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere (ROSE), Inc.) was founded in July 2011 by three Atlanta-based women who have worked in the field of maternal and child health (MCH) for the past twenty-five 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 work as a nurse practitioner, Kimarie Bugg, MSN, FNP-BC, MPH, CLC, observed how the prenatal healthcare system not only failed to teach and encourage breastfeeding but 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©3 nonprofit status from the Internal Revenue Service, 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 by training healthcare providers on culturally effective techniques. Its primary goal was to increase the percentage of African-American women breastfeed and thereby reach the target breastfeeding goal outlined in Healthy People 2020.
ROSE currently provides outreach, education, and technical assistance to prenatal care providers and delivery centers 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 achieving these hard-won gains and its growing network so that it is best-positioned to fulfill its newly defined mission. In order to achieve the 81% increase of African-American women who breastfeed by 2020, there will need to be nationally-focused programs that involve a range of stakeholders: breastfeeding women, individuals, family, health providers, and community and public policymakers.