The Vendor is required to provide 24 hours a day, seven days a week hotline services to afford agency easy, convenient access to trained lactation professionals, who will provide lactation support and referrals to breastfeeding families, caregivers, and health professionals.
- Provide a toll-free breastfeeding support hotline 24 hours a day, seven days a week;
- Increase access to live, trained lactation professionals for all agency; and
- Increase continuity of care through placement of referrals for callers.
- Services include:
• The ability to provide and operate a breastfeeding hotline 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• The ability to provide voicemail capacity to allow a caller to hold and/or leave a message in the event of a busy signal or missed call and return 100% of calls within 30 minutes of the original call.
• The ability to conduct a follow-up call within 72 hours after the initial call to verify breastfeeding status, assess the status of the initial concern, and evaluate the services provided by the hotline.
• The ability to provide language interpretation services for callers who do not speak English or need American Sign Language accommodations.
• The ability to ensure the lactation professionals operating the hotline use professional judgement and provide a referral to an identified physician if there is a medical issue beyond the lactation professional’s scope of practice.
• The ability to obtain, record and summarize call information in a manner that ensures the privacy of callers.
• The ability to follow the American academy of pediatrics’ (AAP) “breastfeeding telephone triage and advice” while performing the work and then record information from the calls, including the lactation professional who responded, the reason for the call, the assessment and determination made and the corresponding strategy(IES) suggested for the resolution.
• The ability to provide callers with appropriate external referrals when necessary.
• The ability to provide callers in-house referrals when appropriate to on-staff IBCLCS and mental health specialists.
• How its in-house mental health specialists are properly trained to provide specialized guidance to callers.
• The ability to participate in monthly conference calls with the agency to review and discuss monthly progress updates.
• The ability to market the hotline across the state to raise awareness and increase usage of the hotline services.
• The ability to provide breastfeeding support 24 hours a day, seven days a week via means other than by phone, such as text messaging service and video chat, in at minimum, English, Spanish and American sign languages.
• The ability to share data and monthly metrics on caller’s information.
• The ability to provide DE identified success stories as requested by the agency.
• The ability to address and meet the specific breastfeeding support needs of state.
• The ability to temporarily provide hotline services, if needed, to other states in times of emergency or natural disaster (e.g. hurricane, tornado, etc.) when mutually agreed upon by the contractor and the agency.
- Provide accurate, up to date information on common breastfeeding issues, including the following:
• Not making enough milk
• Baby refusing to nurse
• Breast or nipple pain
• Medications and breastfeeding
• Working and breastfeeding
• Breast pumps and rentals
• Expressing breast milk
• Storing and handling breast milk
• Breast milk food safety
• Breastfeeding in public
• Weaning
- Provide voicemail capacity to allow a caller to hold and/or leave a message in the event of a busy signal or missed call.  
- A monthly report that records and summarizes the following call information in a manner that ensures the privacy of information received:
• The time and date of call
• The length of call
• The referral source (i.e. special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children (WIC), hospital, home visiting, doctor, or other)
• Is the caller a WIC participant? Yes or no
• Is the caller a first time or repeat caller?
• The caller’s phone number and zip code
• The caller’s relationship to the mother (i.e. self, spouse or partner, family or household member)
• The mother’s age and race and ethnicity
• The mother’s pregnancy history (i.e. number of pregnancies, live births, weeks’ gestation)
• The mother’s breastfeeding experience
• The baby’s birth information (i.e. age, method and term of delivery, birth weight, birth hospital, feeding history)
• The baby’s last recorded weight and the date recorded
• The number of feedings in the past 24 hours
• The number of voids and stools in the past 24 hours.
- Contract Period/Term: 6 years
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: June 03, 2025