MILC Members, Drs. Katherine Kearns and Christina Raimondi, along with other Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine Specialists, founded the North American Board of Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine (NABBLM). The NABBLM will set the standard in physician training, knowledge, skills, and certification in Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine for Canada and the USA. Congratulations to Drs. Kearns and Raimondi and the NABBLM team!

​The recently published milk fortifier paper has created discussion in The Scientist Magazine. Dr. Meghan Azad was interviewed to discuss the research and its implications for feeding premature babies. She emphasized the importance of supporting mothers to pump and store their own breastmilk, and the need for more research in this area. Read the full article here.

Former MILC member, Dr. Shreyas Kumbhare, co-authored with Dr. Meghan Azad and collaborators have published a new research paper in Cell Reports Medicine: "Source of human milk (mother or donor) is more important than fortifier type (human or bovine) in shaping the preterm infant microbiome". This research highlights the importance of feeding mother's own milk to premature infants. Read the full article here [PDF]. A corresponding commentary by Dr. Paula Meier can also be viewed here, and the Children's Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba's press release here. Follow this link to read the Tweetorial.

Congratulations to MILC Co-Director, Natalie Rodriguez, for becoming a Canadian Certified Inclusion Professional (CCIP)! This certification process is designed to assess the knowledge and experience of diversity and inclusion professionals against the standard established by the CCIP Competency Framework. When asked how she feels to be the 2nd person in Manitoba to be certified, she said "I'm honoured to be counted amongst Canada's Certified Inclusion Professionals. This certification is part of my ongoing commitment to increasing health equity in research. We approach research through an inclusive lens with an aim to conduct equitable, well-rounded research that includes traditionally underrepresented or marginalized stakeholders. This begins with engagement, diverse and inclusive study design, recruitment strategies, questionnaire and protocol development through to knowledge translation and dissemination. I am excited to continue supporting our work in equitable health systems design."

On July 1st, 2022, Dr. Nathan Nickel will step into his new role as Director for the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (MCHP) - one of MILC's strategic partner organizations. The MCHP is a centre of research excellence that is world renown for conducting whole-population research on the health and social determinants of health using linked clinical, administrative, and survey data from health and social services, education, the legal system, and health registries. The centre's 65 scientists, trainees, data analysts and managers, research coordinators, and research support staff work together to generate evidence to inform policies, programs, and services to improve Health and well-being. At MILC, we are excited for Dr. Nickel's appointment and look forward to the impactful research MILC and MCHP will do together.

The Canadian Student Health Research Forum (CSHRF) and Gairdner Symposium were held jointly June 13-20, 2022 at the University of Manitoba. This annual event offered a venue for networking, research exposure, and recognized some of Canada's most promising research trainees in the health sciences. THRiVE Discovery Lab Graduate Student, Spencer Ames, under the supervision of Dr. Meghan Azad, received an honourable mention from the Manitoba Poster Competition for his poster presentation "Investigating the relationship between infant feeding practices and immune biomarkers of one-year-old infants in the CHILD Cohort Study".

Congratulations, Dr. Meghan Azad! Nominated by her graduate students, the Ed Kroeger Mentorship Award (awarded by the Health Sciences Graduate Students' Association) recognized Dr. Azad for her excellence and distinction in mentorship, teaching, and research. Noting that "mentorship is a team effort in the THRiVE Discovery Lab", Dr. Azad invited her co-director, Natalie Rodriguez, and Research Associate, Larisa Lotoski, to join her on stage and receive the award.

Congratulations! Under Dr. Lauren Kelly's supervision, Uma defended her Master's thesis Medications in Milk. Dr. Kelly's Clinical Pharmacology Lab studies the use of medications during breastfeeding, and played an integral role in the launch of MILC. Visit this link for Dr. Kelly's Tweetorial on Uma's presentation.

The Breastmilk Ecology: Genesis of Infant Nutrition (BEGIN) Project webinar was held virtually earlier this week and MILC Co-Director, Dr. Meghan Azad, presented on the "Research Approach for Investigating Human Milk as a Biological System". The BEGIN Project looks at the ecological approach to analyzing human milk by studying it as a complex biological system and examining its interactions with its internal (parental biology) and external (infant interactions) environments. Follow these links to read more about BEGIN and view the webinar.

​Dr. Meghan Azad, a Fellow of the CIFAR Humans & the Microbiome program, was featured in CIFAR's REACH magazine in their winter 2022 "The Next Generation" issue. Dr. Azad used the opportunity to highlight the importance of studying breastmilk, and acknowledged The Manitoba Interdisciplinary Centre (MILC) as a support for her research. "People have been studying breast milk for a long time. But to be honest, not that many people. It’s surprising when you think about it, given how important breast milk is to our species", stated Dr. Azad. "We look for various nutrients, enzymes, hormones, antibodies, immune factors, microbes, metabolites, and so on. The idea is, if we analyze everything in the milk and then look at it all together, we can understand how breast milk influences the microbiome, gut health, immunity and growth. It’s the new way of thinking about human milk as a ‘biological system".