There are currently disparities in the support of family choices for infant/toddler feeding by families during disasters in the United States. The current U.S. federal/national model only supports commercial infant formula as an immediate substitute in the event of issues or challenges with breastfeeding/chestfeeding (FEMA 2022). Most U.S. states, local governments, tribal nations and territories do not have complete solutions to support the preexisting and pre-disaster family-led choices for feeding, at shelters and other disaster fixed feeding sites. There are opportunities to apply global standards and best practices, in the United States and other countries, for more equitable and healthier results via a top-down and bottom-up grassroots change-management workflow.
This chapter is an academic detailing of the pracademic (i.e., both practitioner and academic) journey, first introduced to Emergency Management professionals and others in 2023 (Prasad and Russell 2023). The authors provided tactics and methods which could be used by anyone, to further solutions in their own jurisdictions.
The authors have continued their pracademic research and advocacy, beyond just documenting the real-world problem in that prior article, towards the goal of deliberative planning changes needed in policies and procedures detailed in this chapter. One goal of this chapter is to effectively eliminate the lack of awareness of this pediatric feeding problem during disasters, and potential solutions. Another goal is to describe a novel top-down and bottom-up grassroots multi-pronged advocacy approach, coupled with the academic process of research and publishing, to effect a paradigm shift in strategic and operational planning. Utilizing the Emergency Management practitioner methodology of the POETE process (FEMA 2018) for continuous improvement problem-solving, the authors have separately and jointly embarked on this journey for positive change on this concern, which can have constructive outcomes on this and other disaster equity issues, throughout the United States and internationally.