Policy & Advocacy
Turning what we learn through care into systems change.
Access barriers do not begin with families, and they cannot be solved by asking families to navigate around them indefinitely.
Through Policy & Advocacy, The Obsidian Milk Collective works to identify and address the policies, coverage decisions, and healthcare systems that influence whether families can access professional lactation care.
Our advocacy is informed by what we see through community-based clinical care, direct access work, family experiences, and the development of new models of care.
We are not only asking where access is missing.
We are asking why, and what needs to change.
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Honor
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Learn * Access * Thrive * Connect * Honor *
Why Policy Matters
A lactation professional can provide excellent care. A community organization can create a fund. A program can distribute breast pumps. These interventions matter, but they cannot independently correct the systems that determine whether lactation care is available, covered, funded, or integrated into healthcare.
Policy influences who can provide care, what services insurance will cover, how providers are reimbursed, which equipment families can access, and whether lactation care is treated as an essential component of maternal and infant healthcare.
When those systems fall short, families and community-based organizations are often left to fill the gaps.
OMC's policy work is about moving beyond temporary workarounds toward sustainable access.
Our Policy Priorities
Medicaid Lactation Coverage
OMC advocates for comprehensive lactation coverage within Alabama Medicaid so families can access professional lactation care during pregnancy and postpartum without relying on temporary or charitable funding pathways.
Our direct Medicaid Access work helps us better understand where coverage gaps exist, how they affect families, and what comprehensive coverage should include.
Breast Pump Access
Breast pump access is an important component of lactation continuation.
OMC advocates for policies and coverage models that recognize pumps as more than equipment distribution and support access to an appropriate pump alongside the education, fitting, clinical guidance, and continued care families may need to use it effectively.
Insurance & Reimbursement
Having insurance does not always mean having meaningful lactation coverage.
OMC works to understand and address insurance policies, reimbursement structures, provider recognition, and coverage changes that can restrict access to professional lactation care or make that access difficult to sustain.
Continuity of Care
Lactation care often involves the parent-baby dyad and may require more than one clinical encounter.
OMC advocates for coverage and care models that recognize lactation as a continuum, not a single visit, and allow families to receive clinically appropriate follow-up as their needs evolve.
Representation & Community-Based Care
Who is available to provide care is also an access issue.
OMC advocates for systems that recognize and invest in community-based lactation care, strengthen pathways for a representative lactation workforce, and ensure that communities most affected by maternal and infant health inequities have a voice in how lactation services are designed and delivered.
From Practice to Policy
OMC's policy priorities are not developed separately from our clinical and community work.
What families experience when seeking care can reveal where systems are working, and where they are not. The barriers encountered through insurance, Medicaid, pump access, referrals, continuity of care, and other parts of the healthcare system provide important information about what needs to change.
Through the Lactation Access Initiative, OMC can respond to an immediate access barrier while also asking what created it.
Direct care helps us see the gap. Advocacy helps us address the conditions that created it.
That relationship allows OMC to bring clinical experience, community voice, and real-world implementation into conversations about lactation policy.
Lactation Justice as a Policy Framework
Lactation Justice asks us to look beyond whether someone chooses to breastfeed or whether breastfeeding is encouraged.
It asks whether people have the rights, resources, information, care, representation, autonomy, and conditions necessary to make and sustain informed decisions about lactation.
That includes the right to access professional care. The ability to obtain the tools needed to continue lactation. The freedom to determine what feeding looks like for one's own family. And systems that do not make those opportunities dependent on race, income, insurance status, geography, or circumstance.
OMC is working to name, define, and advance Lactation Justice as a framework for understanding and addressing these conditions.
The Black Lactation Bill of Rights
The Black Lactation Bill of Rights translates Lactation Justice into a declaration of what Black families should be able to expect across healthcare, workplaces, childcare settings, communities, and other systems that influence lactation.
Developed by OMC, the Bill of Rights centers autonomy, dignity, representation, access to professional care, informed decision-making, and the conditions necessary for Black families to pursue their individual lactation goals.
Get Involved
Systems change requires the voices and experiences of the people most affected by the systems we are working to change.
Families, lactation professionals, healthcare providers, community organizations, researchers, funders, and policymakers all have a role in building more equitable lactation access.
Part of the Lactation Access Initiative
Policy & Advocacy is the systems-change arm of OMC's Lactation Access Initiative.
Alongside the Lactation Access Fund and Medicaid Access, this work allows OMC to respond to barriers families experience today while advocating for the structural changes necessary to prevent those barriers tomorrow.