"If we are truly committed to justice, we must protect families from systems that substitute marketing for care."

Black Maternal Health Week calls us to be rooted in justice and joy. It requires us to imagine and build a world where Black mothers and families are not only surviving but thriving. A world where care is accessible, support is abundant, and joy is not interrupted by preventable harm.

To get there, we must be honest about what stands in the way.

As a Detroit-based maternal health leader working alongside families, and community-based providers across the country, I see firsthand what families are navigating. Parents are moving through pregnancy, birth, and early parenting while facing limited access to paid leave, gaps in postpartum care, and uneven access to breastfeeding support. For Black families, these challenges are compounded by long-standing inequities in health care systems and outcomes.

At the very moment families need support the most, they are also being met with something else: marketing.

Across the country, infant formula is being promoted through increasingly sophisticated campaigns, often framed as empowerment, convenience, or relief. These messages show up when families are tired, healing, and searching for answers. They are positioned as support, but they are designed to influence.

Let’s be clear, this is not about judging how families feed their babies. Families deserve respect and support in whatever decisions they make. But justice requires that those decisions are informed by accurate, unbiased information that is not shaped by marketing strategies that capitalize on vulnerability.

We’ve seen this before. For decades, infant formula companies have targeted Black communities with tailored messaging, building trust through culturally relevant language while promoting products as solutions to systemic problems. Today’s campaigns are more polished, often aligning themselves with conversations about maternal health, equity, and even paid leave. High-visibility campaigns increasingly position infant formula as empowerment using trusted, popular voices and cultural relevance to build credibility with Black families.

But marketing is not support, it is a strategy. Breastfeeding is not just a personal choice. It is shaped by whether families have time, space, and support. Research shows that access to paid leave and community-based care increases the likelihood that families will meet their breastfeeding goals. Yet instead of fully investing in those supports, we continue to see investment in marketing that targets families during their most vulnerable moments. When marketing fills the gap left by missing support, it doesn’t just inform decisions, it shapes them. And it can do so in ways that undermine breastfeeding goals and long-term maternal and infant health outcomes.

If we are truly committed to justice, we must protect families from systems that substitute marketing for care. If we are truly committed to joy, we must ensure that families are supported, not targeted, during one of the most sacred transitions of their lives.

Community-based organizations across the country are doing the real work, providing doula care, breastfeeding peer counseling, and culturally grounded breastfeeding support. These efforts are rooted in trust, not transactions. They are what justice looks like in practice. They are what makes joy possible.

Yet these same organizations often operate with limited resources, while marketing campaigns aimed at new parents continue to expand in reach and influence. We cannot allow commercial interests to define what support looks like for Black families. Black Maternal Health Week is not just a moment for awareness; it is a call to action. Policymakers, funders, and health leaders must act now by investing in community-based care, expanding paid family leave, and strengthening protections around how infant feeding products are marketed. Families deserve access to clear, evidence-based information free from commercial influence.

To be rooted in justice and joy means more than naming inequities. It means removing the conditions that create them.

Families need support, not substitution.
They need policy, not positioning.
They need care, not campaigns.

Because when Black mothers are truly centered, we move beyond responding to harm and instead build systems where families can experience full, dignified, and joyful care from the very beginning.