Dr. Katharina Lichtner
Foundation Managing Director
Welcome and introduction
My journey with the Foundation started not from its beginning but shortly after in October 2015. It was in early 2015 as I was leaving my position as CEO of a sports technology start-up that I received a call from a headhunter I knew well. He introduced the opportunity to build up a foundation focused on breastfeeding that had been established by the Swiss-based Larsson- Rosenquist family just two years prior.
As a mother who had been fortunate and privileged to easily breastfeed each of my two sons for over six months while continuing my career, it never occurred to me that breastfeeding could be a problem. Or a topic so vast that it could warrant the exclusive focus of an entire foundation. How wrong I was! During the first meetings of the interview process, I realized that the breadth and complexity of breastfeeding are second to none. I was fascinated to find breastfeeding encompasses aspects from science to religion and everything in between.
In addition, the prospect of building another – and very different – organization after having been involved in building up companies for nearly 20 years was very appealing. What won me over was the Foundation’s unique situation of financial independence and its candid entrepreneurial spirit. The founding family and the Foundation Board were united in the aim for an innovative approach to making breastmilk the norm of infant feeding again. Since then, the experience could not have been better.
The Foundation’s culture of openness afforded me the freedom to systematically identify key break points in the challenge to increase breastfeeding rates. Together with the Board, we developed a multi-year strategy to address critical issues and build an excellent team able to execute such a strategy. The result? We are completely rethinking the journey from science to impact.
Breastfeeding is the single most effective intervention to improve a baby’s health and chance for a better life, particularly in the Global South. Yet despite decades of investment, breastfeeding rates are still frustratingly low: Millions of women and families worldwide don’t have the support they need to provide breastmilk to their children. We believe it’s time for new ideas to accelerate progress.
Together with our partners we set out to revitalize the journey from science to impact, so countries can break through entrenched challenges and sustain ambitious breastfeeding goals. Details about one of our central projects – the operationalization of a country’s breastfeeding policy – are on pages 25–27 and 32 in the PDF and ebook above.
In the Foundation’s initial years, we focused on learning from the international community. We gathered knowledge about past and present endeavors to improve breastfeeding environments, sharpening our understanding of what works and where we can best contribute to progress. This informed the development of innovative tools and resources that help decision-makers map out strategies that work for their communities.
It is generally accepted that breastfeeding immediately saves lives in the Global South, protecting infants from deadly communicable diseases. However, breastfeeding’s significant contribution to the long-term health of mothers and infants here in Switzerland is often overlooked. In the last World Breastfeeding Trend Initiative (WbTi) survey of 100 countries, Switzerland ranked 71st, scoring only 48 of 100 on progress in implementing a global standard for infant and young child feeding. This is not surprising, considering how few resources and little attention are dedicated to the topic.
Hence, the Foundation is extending its strategy, bringing learnings and achievements from the last 10 years home to improve the breastfeeding environment in Switzerland. Our contributions will focus on convening key stakeholders to collectively work towards a national breastfeeding strategy. Details outlining how the breastfeeding environment can be evolved to make it easier for women to breastfeed successfully are on page 36.
Two of the five independent research centers the Foundation has endowed are in Switzerland, and we are exploring together with the research teams how their research can contribute to improving the breastfeeding environment for families in the country (pages 15 and 20).
Together with Professor Nikola Biller-Andorno, who leads the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine at the University in Zurich, we developed a framework to assess ethical questions around breastfeeding research and interventions (page 31). We look forward to the findings benefiting mothers in both Switzerland and abroad.
The public breastfeeding room we opened in our office in Frauenfeld in 2021 enables us to collect valuable, firsthand experience about operating such a space. We will direct the knowledge we gain towards improving workplace breastfeeding situations in Switzerland.
Likewise, we are translating many of the tools created in English over the last 10 years into German, French and eventually Italian so that practitioners in Switzerland can easily use them.
We are excited to enter our next decade and continue this journey, contributing original, innovative approaches to improve the breastfeeding environment for families worldwide. We believe that committing to this work and to funding breastfeeding are investments in our shared future.