We’re celebrating International Breastfeeding Week – a time to promote optimal nutrition and immune protection to infants, including a plethora of health-promoting factors that support infant growth and development.

UM researcher Dr. Meghan Azad is Canada Research Chair in Developmental Origins of Chronic Disease and a research scientist at the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba (CHRIM). She was on CTV Winnipeg Morning Live to talk about the importance of breastfeeding.

A new study by researchers at the University of Manitoba and the University of British Columbia (UBC) has found that bacteria are shared and possibly transferred from a mother’s milk to her infant’s gut, and that breastfeeding directly at the breast best supports this process.

UM Today caught up with Turner to chat about how the Vanier Scholarship will support her research titled: Breastfeeding and child behaviour: Understanding the link through five different pathways in the Canadian CHILD birth cohort study.