Survey Results & free pizza and fruit at Brigham Square this Thursday (11am-1pm)!!!!

Thanks to everyone who participated in my survey! We received 95 compeleted surveys on Qualtrics and four more surveys that were partially completed. My women's health group and myself presented our survey results to a board of BYU faculty on Monday morning and we did much better than we expected too, considering that we didn't think that we were very prepared. The purpose of our survey was to find out if female students who attended BYU though BYU was already a breastfeeding friendly atmosphere or if they felt that more nursing lounges and pumping stations were needed on BYU campus.
Here is a list of some of the statistics that we discovered from the survey....

• Demographic Information: 95 BYU female studnets surveyed, 91% had a junior or senior status, 51% were married and the rest were single, 91% were breastfed as an infant
• 79% think infants will experience fewer illnesses
• 93% believe mothers feel satisfaction if they are able to breastfeed
• 97% think that breastfeeding helps mothers and infants bond
• 68% think breastfeeding is beautiful, that it is not disrepsectful to others when breastfeeding is done in public, and that it is important not to see the breasts of women who choose to breastfeed in public areas
• 88% are very likely to breastfeed their future/ current infants and 62% want to feed thier infants pumped breastmilk
• 89% believe that private nurisng rooms would increase a female student's success rate in continueing to breastfeeding her infant while attending classes on BYU campus

Interestingly, many universities in the U.S. have multipile private nurisng lounges. For example, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor has 14 private nuring lounges on campus. In addition, Pennsylvania State University has has 6 private nursing lounges on thier campus that are all staffed with lactation specialists and have hospital grade breast pumps! Wow! I want to go there if i'm ever going to college and expecting a newborn!!!!

The reason I wanted to work on this project this semester is because I don't think that BYU has very good "nursing lounges." Sure, they are existant but they are not private; more oftenly I see students sleeping in the "nursing lounges" than female students nursing their infants on the couches in the "nursing lounges." Who wants to feed their baby next to a nursing lounge that is connected to a bathroom where other students are emptying out their bladders anyways?

Anyways, this is the reason that I love public health- promoting health to thousands at a time to prevent diseases and disparities before people need treatments. It's National Public Health week and to celebrate this, the BYU public health program is doing a huge celebration in Brigham Square this thursday (April 9th) from 11am-1pm. We will be having free pizza and fruit to anyone- you don't need to do anything, you just need to get in line. Don't worry, there won't be long lines because there will be 4 lines that will be "pizza lines." Also, if you fill out a little card that has public health questions on it (you just ask one of the volunteers for the right answer, it's super easy) you will get a free t-shirt and will be entered into a drawing to win an IPOD NANO!!!! And you don't need to be present to win the FREE ipod nano. We will also be renting an apple, grape, and hamberger costumes so we can have people dressed up in these costume and people can come and get their pictures taken with them for them as one of the "questions/ tasks" to do on the card to get a free t-shirt and ipod nano drawing. I'll be volunteering at this event from 11am-12pm for sure, maybe 1 pm if i get my philosophy paper done before then. Please come- at least for the free pizza and fruit if you're not interested in the t-shirt and ipod nano drawing.

Even though this isn't related... i got an internship!!!! It's at the Southeastern Idaho Heatlh Department...after I do this internship this summer, i'm done with college! I can't believe i'm almost a college graduate!!!