08/01/2025
📆 FRIDAY AUGUST 1st!! 📆
Live Q&A with human milk and breastfeeding researchers! 🤱🏽🧑🏽🔬
WHEN: THIS Friday, 11AM-4PM CT / 12PM - 5PM ET
WHERE: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/
Last year, we did an AMA (r/AskScience) in honor of World Breastfeeding Week, and we had so much fun we are coming back again this year to answer your burning boobquiries!
We hope to share some cool science to inspire curiosity about this fascinating science and empower parents with a better understanding of their kiddos!
Lactation science is fraught with social complexity. Tensions between researchers, advocates, & industry impacts both our work and the lived experiences of breastfeeding families. Furthermore, inequities in what kind of research is prioritized mean that “womens health issues” get double sidelined when there are budget cuts like the ones we’ve seen in the US recently. But we believe that lactation science belongs to everyone, and matters to everyone, and that you wonderfully curious Redditors are an important part of this conversation.
We also think that science should never make anyone feel bad or guilty–it should inspire awe and curiosity! Based on social research, breastfeeding advocacy has moved beyond “breastfeeding promotion” toward treating it like the ✨healthcare access issue✨ that it is, highlighting the role of families, societies, communities and health workers in creating a “warm chain” of support.
World Breastfeeding Week is a global event that celebrates ALL breastfeeding journeys, no matter what it looks like for you. Supported by WHO, UNICEF and many government and civil society partners, it is held in the first week of August every year. The theme for 2025 is focused on breastfeeding as a sustainable source of nutrition–but one that requires sustainable support systems in order to thrive. 🌍🍃
This year’s group hails from biochemistry, biological anthropology, clinical nursing research, epidemiology, family medicine, immunology, lactation medicine, microbiology, molecular bio, and neonatology. We can answer questions in English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Sinhalese, and Hindi.
Check out last year's session here: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ei75mx/askscience_ama_series_happy_world_breastfeeding/
NOTE: In order to ask a question, you need to create a (free) Reddit account. You can make an account here: https://www.reddit.com/register/
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PANELISTS:
MEGHAN AZAD, PhD is a biochemist and epidemiologist who specializes in human milk composition and the infant microbiome. Dr. Azad holds a Canada Research Chair in Early Nutrition and the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. She is a Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health and director of the THRiVE Discovery Lab at the University of Manitoba. She co-founded the Manitoba Interdisciplinary Lactation Centre (MILC), and directs the International Milk Composition Consortium (IMiC).
MARION M. BENDIXEN, PhD, MSN, RN, IBCLC is a nurse scientist and clinical and translational scientist who studies human lactation and maternal/infant health specializing in the biological and physiological mechanisms of insufficient mothers’ own milk (MOM) volume among mothers who deliver an infant(s) admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) as well as how MOM influences the infant’s intestinal microbiome. Dr. Bendixen is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Florida. She co-created the lactation program at Winnie Palmer Hospital where she practices as a board-certified lactation consultant.
SARAH BRUNSON, RN/LC, Phd(c), IBCLC is a board-certified lactation consultant who has practiced since 2009 in pediatric clinics, NICUs, birth centers, home visits, and in public health. She is a PhD candidate in Nursing with a focus in Maternal/Child Health and Lactation at the Medical University of South Carolina/University of South Carolina, and serves as Co-Chair of the South Carolina Breastfeeding Coalition.
MARION BRUNCK, PhD is an immunologist and systems biologist who studies mechanisms that regulate immune cell functions with an eye for possible therapeutic applications. Dr. Brunck specializes in the function of neutrophils and leucocytes in human milk and their role in active immunity in the nursling. As of literally today(!), Dr. Brunch is a Researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México.
RACHAEL FRIESEN, BA, BN, RN, IBCLC is a Clinical Nurse Educator and a neonatal intensive care nurse since 2007. She is Co-chair of the St. Boniface Hospital (SBH) Baby-Friendly Initiative (BFI) Committee and member of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority Baby Friendly Initiative Committee. Friesen has worked at bedside as well as teaching Continuing Education Instructor to medical professionals. She specializes in compassionate, comprehensive clinical care for families, with a special passion for supporting the families of infants in neonatal intensive care and families at risk for feeding challenges.
MIENA HALL, MD, IBCLC is a lactation medicine physician who studies techniques for early diagnosis of mammary tissue development issues and improving lactation education in med schools. Dr. Hall teaches med students at Loyola University, the Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, and the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, and is Director of Scientific Affairs at the Mothers’ Milk Bank of the Western Great Lakes. Dr. Hall is a member of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM) protocol committee on low milk production, a medical advisor to La Leche League International (LLLI), and the immediate past president of the Northern Illinois Lactation Consultant Organization (NILCA). She also holds a Bachelor's in math and chemistry.
KAYTLIN KRUTSCH, PhD, PharmD, MBA, BCPS is a lactation pharmacologist who literally wrote the book on medications in human milk with Dr. Thomas Hale, Hale’s Medications and Mothers’ Milk. She is the director of the InfantRisk Center and Associate Professor at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine, and advises the Food and Drug Administration, the Human Milk Banking Association of Northern America, and pharmaceutical industry on lactation pharmacology and lactation research. Dr. Krutsch believes families deserve better answers about breastfeeding and medication questions, and aims to design research that addresses their questions while creating a comprehensive information cycle that empowers families.
BRIDGET MC GANN is an anthropologist who studies lactation as a biocultural system, and how it shaped us as a species. She is a research assistant and science communicator at THRiVE Discovery Lab. She has a Bachelors in Anthropology and is a Masters student in Biological Anthropology at the University of Colorado Denver. Her thesis uses longitudinal, prospective, large cohort data to study the effects of interruptions in the generational transmission of the human milk microbiome. She was also a founding team member at March for Science (along with r/mockdeath!). Check out her stand-up act about Luke Skywalker’s green milk, or her top comments.
KARINNE CARDOSO MUNIZ, MD is a neonatologist and graduate student in Pediatrics and Child Health (MSc.) at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Cardoso Muniz worked as a dedicated doctor specializing in Neonatology and as a coordinator for the Society of Pediatrics in Brasilia, Brazil, specifically for the Neonatal Resuscitation Program. Throughout her clinical career, Dr. Cardoso Muniz has passionately witnessed and promoted breastfeeding and use of human milk in improving health outcomes of both full-term and premature infants. Here is a lecture she gave in Portuguese about newborn resuscitation.
RYAN PACE, PhD is an Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the Biobehavioral Lab at the College of Nursing and USF Health Microbiomes Institute, University of South Florida. His research revolves around understanding how lactation and the microbiome relate to human health and development. Dr. Pace's current research investigates diverse aspects of maternal-infant health, including relationships among maternal diet, human milk composition, and maternal/infant microbiomes; as well as the role of human milk in modulating immunological risks and benefits to mothers and infants.
REBECCA POWELL, PhD, CLC is a human milk immunologist who studies the human milk immune response to infection and vaccination with the aim of designing maternal vaccines aimed to enhance this response. Dr. Powell is an Assistant Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a certified lactation counselor. Her lab studies the potential of SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies in human milk both as a COVID-19 therapeutic and as a means to prevent infection of breastfed babies. They also study mechanisms for maternal vaccines to prevent mother-to-child-transmission (MTCT) of HIV via breastfeeding, as well as how white blood cells in human milk use a process called antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis (ADCP) to minimize MTCT via breastfeeding.
SANOJI WIJENAYAKE, PhD is a cell and molecular biologist who studies human milk not as a food but as a bioactive regulator of postnatal development and growth. Dr. Wijenayake is an Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator at The University of Winnipeg. Her research focuses on a not-so-well known component of human milk, called milk nanovesicles. Milk nanovesicles are tiny fat bubbles that carry all sorts of important material between parents and their children. Milk nanovesicles hold great therapeutic potential as drug carriers and provide universal anti-inflammatory benefits.
