Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 30, Number 4, 1 April 2013 — Breast-feeding for keiki's sake [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Breast-feeding for keiki's sake

Rainalen Dunno was not the kind of person who nurtured fond dreams of being a healthy mother. Even today, after seven months as a single mom, the breast-feeding patient at the Wai'anae Coast Comprehensive Heahh Center, seems a little surprised that fate brought her to this spot. But the 26-year-old Nānākuli resident knew she had to kiek some bad habits if she wanted to benefit from the well-documented advantages of breast feeding, like long-term protection against a condition linked to diabetes and heart disease, while nourishing her infant daughter, Mya, and boosting her immune system to fight off infections. "I used to want to be anywhere there was a party or aleohol," said Dunno, a sales

associate ror a jewetry retaiter īn Waiklkī. "But all of that changed after I made the decision to breastfeed. I heeame more conscious of what I was putting in my body, because I know it was going into Mya." Dunno's new outlook on her

wellness reflects the support thousands of Native Hawaiian patients are getting through care from the Wai'anae Coast Comprehensive Heahh Center. She is among the 16,179 Native Hawaiian patients that received care from the heahh center last year. They accounted for about 52 percent of the total number of patients the heahh center saw in 2012. Their numbers also represent

the growing demand in the past three years to address behavioral heahh, substance abuse and childhood obesity in the Hawaiian community. At the same time, about 60 percent of the center's Native Hawaiian patients are covered by Medicaid. "Addressing childhood obesity is a priority community-

— ** N wide initiative for our board of directors and ^ staff," said Richard Bettini, president and chief executive officer of Wai'anae Coast Comprehensive Heahh Center. "The most eommon condition impacting the children we see, the majority being Native Hawaiian, is being overweight or obese. Our eommu- j nity-wide initiative plans include working whh community groups, schools, Hawaiian I homesteads, civic organizations and sports | teams to unite on addressing the heahh of our children." ' Of the heahh center's $49 million annual | budget, an estimated $103,000 comes from | an Office of Hawaiian Affairs grant. Dunno is among those benefiting from the I OHA grant, whieh targets a series of family- \ heahh services, including a breast-feeding programthat has prompted her to quit smoking a paek of cigarettes a day, consuming three bottles of Mountain Dew soda every day and drinking aleohol. "Pregnancy helped me kiek a lot of bad habits," Dunno said. "My breast-feeding program taught me to watch what I was putting into my body, especially since my family has a history of diabetes and obesity that I didn't want for my daughter." ■

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Rainalen Dunno and her daughter, Mya, look a walk after a breastfeeding eheekup at Wai'anae Coast Comprehensive Health Center.