2013 Health Care Champions Honoree: Julie Randolph

“Babies aren’t born with instruction manuals,” says Julie Randolph, Women, Infants and Children program supervisor and breast-feeding coordinator at the Greene County Health Department.

Springfield is home to Missouri’s largest single-site WIC office, where Randolph helps lead a 25-member team who execute 90,000 participant encounters each year. WIC serves about half of all babies born in the Ozarks, a figure in line with comparable state and national statistics.

“My passion is helping young families,” Randolph says. “I get to help new mothers feel successful in feeding and nurturing their child. Emotions can be very fragile in the first days of motherhood, and there is nothing more humbling then to know you’ve made a positive difference.”

Randolph’s dedication is equal parts passion and mission. In addition to direct family interactions and supervisory duties, she is a resolute social advocate for a mother’s right to breastfeed.

“Many young parents worry about how to best care for their infant,” she says. “Breast-feeding is the natural way to feed a baby, even though it doesn’t always come naturally.”

Randolph works closely with community medical partners CoxHealth, Jordan Valley Community Health Center and Mercy Springfield to push for increased willingness to implement policy and practice that supports, promotes and normalizes breast-feeding. The groups established the Greater Ozarks Regional Breastfeeding Coalition.

“A mother’s natural breast milk is the very basis of health,” she says. “It’s better for all parties involved. The rates of everything from ear infections to allergies, diabetes, obesity, even cancer – all of these can be reduced in children who are breastfed.”

To that end, the coalition opened the Greater Ozarks Regional Mother’s Milk Depot, in conjunction with the Heart of America’s Mother’s Milk Bank at Saint Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City.

The Ozarks milk bank is one of only 13 in the country and Randolph serves as its coordinator.

Through WIC, Randolph also helps provide visits from lactation consultants who help new mothers work through issues during the first few weeks of breast-feeding. Beyond instructional support, Randolph’s agency also offers a new electric breast pump free for qualifying new moms returning to work or school. She says the goal is to extend the nutritional benefits of breast-feeding even if a mother must be away during the day.

While it’s a passion-driven pursuit, Randolph says there are some very pragmatic numbers that support breast-feeding.

Her agency pays around $80 for each pump – a high-end, compact model that retails for $250 to $350. Randolph says even if that new mother uses the pump only for one month, WIC recoups its entire $80 wholesale outlay through cost savings from formula otherwise distributed to that family.[[In-content Ad]]