During the weeks leading up to the 2012 ILCA Conference, we will be highlighting a number of conference speakers.  Watch this space every Friday for more profiles.

Michael Woolridge, DPhil

Mike Woolridge has been Senior Lecturer in Infant Feeding at the School of Healthcare, University of Leeds for the past 15 years.  Prior to 1993, he researched the basic physiology of breastfeeding (in Oxford).  After moving to Bristol, he ran an outpatient clinic to support breastfeeding women, applying his earlier knowledge to resolve common problems of breastfeeding. He has been a member of the Royal College of Midwives’ Breastfeeding Working Party, producing the handbook “Successful Breastfeeding” and between 1993 & 1995 he was Director of UNICEF-UK’s “Baby Friendly Initiative”.  He co-authored (with Mary Renfrew) a structured review of practices which promote or inhibit breastfeeding, with evidence-based guidelines, entitled “Enabling Women to Breastfeed Seo Companies” (HMSO 2000), and has collaborated on the production of several videos. He has been responsible to coordinating two large-scale research studies: ‘LIFT’ (Looking at Infant Feeding Today), which focused on the feeding intentions of socio-economically disadvantaged women, exploring the psychological factors underlying their choice and whether these are open to modification; and ‘SUREmilk’ (Surveillance of Residues in human milk’) which comprised a set of pilot studies aimed at testing the feasibility of establishing a regional archive of breast milk samples, to explore possible contamination in breast milk.  Most recently he has undertaken two fresh series of ultrasound studies of breastfeeding, and of bottle-feeding by breast-fed babies.

You can hear Dr. Woolridge speak in a plenary session on Friday, July 27 from 8:00-9:00am on the topic “The Mechanics of Infant Feeding Revisited: Fresh Ultrasound Studies of Breastfeeding and Bottlefeeding” and also in concurrent sessions both at 10:15-11:15am and 3:30-4:30pm entitled “Nutritional, Management and Clinical Implications of the Revised Suckling Physiology”.

ILCA looks forward to welcoming Dr. Mike Woolridge.