Amy and Jen chat to the inspiring Alison Spiro who has a PhD in anthropology as well as practicing as a health visitor. Listing all her achievements is a podcast summary in itself, but across her career she has worked as a breastfeeding counsellor herself, established an incredibly successful peer support service, taken both a hospital and community trust to BabyFriendly accreditation, worked on the world breastfeeding trends initiative report in 2015, contributes to the APPG on infant feeding on behalf of BestBeginnings, volunteers with the Breastfeeding Alliance, has been the iHV expert advisor on breastfeeding. Most recently, she is the author of 'Breastfeeding for Public Health: A resource for community healthcare professionals'. We discuss with Alison some of the most important issues in breastfeeding support - from culture and anthropology to emotions, wellbeing, mental health and therapeutic communication skills. We talk about the importance of debriefing your own infant feeding experiences and bringing an unbiased listening ear to your interactions with families. Hopefully this will be an interesting and relevant discussion for your health visiting practice. We would love to her your thoughts and comments at iamahealthvisitor@gmail.com Reading & Resources: Alison's new book - 'Breastfeeding for Public Health: A resource for community healthcare professionals': https://www.amazon.co.uk/Breastfeeding-Public-Health-Healthcare-Professionals/dp/0367689561/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3M4VF06U18GP7&keywords=breastfeeding+for+public+health&qid=1652711900&sprefix=breastfeeding+for+p%2Caps%2C71&sr=8-2 World Breastfeeding Trends Report: https://www.worldbreastfeedingtrends.org/resources/publications Becoming Breastfeeding Friendly with Yale University: https://ysph.yale.edu/bfci/ Kathryn Stagg IBCLC: https://kathrynstaggibclc.com Eve Canavan lived experience story: https://www.app-network.org/news-events/news/personal-experiences/story-eves/