Breastfeeding Pioneer: Karin Cadwell

From 2009 – 2011, Our Bodies Ourselves honored the work of women’s health advocates worldwide by asking readers to nominate their favorite women’s health hero. View all nominees by year: 2009, 2010, 2011

Entrant: Margaret H. Naylor, CNM, MPH, FACCE

Nominee: Karin Cadwell, PhD, RN, FAAN, IBCLC, Consultant – Healthy Children Project

Karin Cadwell is my new Heroine. Her dedication to mothers and babies has had a profound impact on me and I’m sure on all those she has taught and mentored.

Karin is a Breastfeeding Pioneer. She has worked tirelessly with patients, with care providers, with hospitals and health care agencies and with the public to promote Breastfeeding as the norm for women in the United States.

She is a leader who has motivated individuals not just on the local and state level, but also on the national and international fronts to protect the rights of breastfeeding mothers and babies.

From my point of view, she is one of those “unsung heroes” who never asks to be honored, but deserves to be.

Her enthusiasm for empowering women to reclaim breastfeeding in our country is both laudable and contagious. She does this work against obstacles that persist in our society that prevent women from realizing the full, potential benefits of breastfeeding for women, children, families and the health of the American public.

She has dedicated her life to this work and deserves recognition for all she has done and all she will do.

With all the evidence she has reviewed and all the time she has spent working with women and women’s health care providers, she continues to protect, promote and support a woman’s right to breastfeed her child.

I am very proud to nominate Karin Cadwell to be a recognized Women’s Health Hero by Our Bodies Ourselves.