When Maria Palapa was pregnant with her first child, she would frequently pump or nurse her son in her car during her lunch break. She called the experience difficult, uncomfortable, and unrealistic for mothers.

“I was stressed out trying to figure out how to pump at work, and it was just challenging figuring out how to fulfill that for my baby,” she said.

By the time she was pregnant with her third child, she was a master’s student at the UNLV School of Public Health and had more information about her rights as a student to breastfeeding spaces. She was working with Gabriela Buccini, a social and behavioral health associate professor, and a team of UNLV researchers studying maternal and child health and ways to improve support for families across Nevada.

Palapa said everyone on the team understood her needs as a student and a mom. She was able to bring her child to meetings and even breastfeed or pump without feeling like she had to go to a lactation room in the middle of a meeting.

Today, Palapa continues to work with her colleagues to educate families about the health benefits of breastfeeding and food security during early childhood.

“It really took being aware of all that knowledge that I learned from working with Buccini’s team that this is something that should be available to parent-students and anyone that needs that support,” she said.

Gathering Data to Help Families

When Gabriela Buccini first arrived in the School of Public Health on the heels of the pandemic, there was little data on maternal and child health that would help support her research in the area.

So, she set about designing a survey that would help identify the various factors that impact a mother and child’s health and development.

The Maternal, Child Health and Nutrition (MCHN) Survey has been deployed by Buccini and her team in various stages over the last six years: first for mothers of children younger than 6 months old and gradually to account for children up to 3 years old.

The survey collects data on families like income level, nutrition and food security, and the quality of nurturing and caregiving in the home.

In total, 2,686 families have been surveyed. This week, Buccini will present the findings from the last six years of survey data at a conference organized by the Nevada Statewide Maternal and Child Health Coalition.

Hispanic families were the largest ethnic group represented in the survey, with nearly half of households reporting income below $50,000, and more than half reported themselves as being low or very low when it came to food security.

When looking at the national data, approximately 10%-12% of the population is considered food insecure, Buccini said. In Clark County, that number is 30%, with the number climbing to 50%-60% in some of the more vulnerable zip codes targeted by the survey.

“That justifies why we do this here, why local data is important,” Buccini said.

The comprehensive survey took 15-20 minutes to complete, which led Buccini and her team to offer incentives for families in historically disenfranchised and underrepresented communities, like those in Las Vegas’ Historic Westside. That incentivization is just one piece of what Vargas says has made the team successful in building trust in a historically disenfranchised community.

“We have these parents asking, what else does UNLV have? What other studies; what other surveys?” she said. “It makes that connection of trusting UNLV, trusting the School of Public Health, and that what we’re doing is real and it’s honest.”

Addressing the Needs of Student Parents at UNLV

In 2009, UNLV students that were also parents on campus approached the Jean Nidetch Care Center – then the UNLV Women’s Center – asking about what resources were available to them.

One student in particular was adamant that the center needed to do more, expressing frustration about having to pump breastmilk for her baby in her car or in the bathroom in between classes.

Cristina Hernandez, the center’s director at the time, quickly mobilized and took action by reaching out to the lactation and birth community to learn more.

“As a Women’s Center, how could we not support the needs of parents that were also students, staff, and faculty on campus?” she said.

Over the years, the Family Advocacy Committee, a part of the UNLV's Women’s Council, has since increased lactation rooms on campus by having them be part of any new building.

“This is the power of student voices,” Hernandez said.

Those efforts were also instrumental in ensuring students like Palapa now have comfortable places to go to nurse and breastfeed.

“Having these lactation resources on campus allows student and staff mothers to be recognized, to know that they have a space on campus for their needs,” Palapa said. “There’s space for you here for what you need, whether it’s breastfeed, pumping, a space to go in. We see you. We know that you need this space, you’re a lactating parent and we’re going to give you that space.”

Out in the community, Palapa has also been able to take her experiences on the team to educate moms about the ways that breastfeeding benefits them and their health.

When Data Impacts Action

Buccini and her team have established several lactation support groups around the valley where moms can go to talk about their postpartum challenges, including breastfeeding. The support groups — at UMC Health Living Institute and the Anthem Wellness Center — include sessions held entirely in Spanish, and Palapa encourages Latina moms to go there and discuss the challenges they might be experiencing.

“A big part of me being able to contribute in my culture is for moms to recognize that those benefits exist both ways,” she said. “It’s not just feeding baby so baby is full; it’s the benefits for myself (such as) reducing risk of postpartum depression and anxiety.”

Encouragingly, nearly 80% of the MCHN survey respondents said they received assistance from a lactation counselor or breastfeeding support group. 

But Hernandez says those numbers likely represent the brief access to a lactation consultant that new moms receive in the hospital directly after giving birth.

“You may see someone for 10-15 minutes, but that’s not adequate enough time to figure out what’s going on,” she said. “What happens after that visit? You leave the hospital and then what?”

Being able to support moms in the postpartum period when they feel overwhelmed and isolated is something the team hopes to address with their new data.

“Most times when someone has a baby, the larger community is focused on the baby but they forget about the mom,” Hernandez said. “Being able to hold the moms in that same regard when others were focused on the baby really highlighted the importance of this work.

“We know that when mom’s doing great everyone else is good.”

Buccini says her team hopes to continue leveraging data — including through a grant from the Caresource Community Health Innovation Grant Challenge — to implement more interventions and resources for new moms in the months before giving birth.

Ultimately, she’ll be bolstered by the team of women she has cultivated around her at the School of Public Health.

It’s a team that saw three overlapping pregnancies, baby showers, nursing during meetings and, Buccini says, countless diapers changed in her own office.

“I don’t feel like if someone is pregnant, they should be treated differently,” she said. “It’s pretty important that everybody on our team feels welcome. I don’t want them to feel they have to hide they are pregnant or that people will be dismissive because they’re pregnant or that their job was threatened.

“I feel very fortunate to have the team I do. I feel like it should be that way for everybody. Every woman should be feeling supported through this period."