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Hans Schmidtner
Former President of the Foundation Board, 2021–2023
Reflections of gratitude
Dear Friends,
The 10th anniversary of the Family Larsson-Rosenquist Foundation is the perfect opportunity to reflect on our achievements and express our immense gratitude to our partners for joining us on this journey from science to impact. As former President of the Foundation Board, I thank you sincerely for your outstanding support and collaboration over the past decade. Your dedication to our founding family’s vision – a world where every child has an optimum start in life through the benefits of breastmilk – is creating positive change for new generations here at the Foundation’s home in Switzerland and around the world.
As a longtime friend of Olle Larsson, I know that he would be grateful for your dedication to his family’s vision and work to advance breastfeeding, as are his sons, Göran and Michael Larsson. In 10 short years, we have achieved much to be proud of.
With our partners, we endowed five independent research centers at renowned universities, including two at the University of Zurich. Today, these centers are leading innovative investigations in breastfeeding and breastmilk. They have since gone a step further, forming the Global Human Milk Research Consortium to collaborate on interdisciplinary research projects capable of bridging traditional divides between disciplines. We funded nearly 30 discrete research and tool development projects. Some were “anchor projects”, now evolving into training resources or tools with scope for global scale-up. We launched the LactaHub online knowledge platform, growing daily, with by now over 5,600 subscribers and counting.
All these activities exposed the need for clear, strategic action plans to turn breastfeeding policies into reality. This need is universal – independent of location, and despite progressive breastfeeding policies. Thus, with our partners in Ghana, we are co-creating and co-testing an operationalization process that can be scaled up for sustainable, improved breastfeeding outcomes in different countries. Details about this innovative collaboration are in the anniversary book on pages 25–27, by Managing Director Dr. Katharina Lichtner, and on page 32, in an interview with project co-reator Dr. Ernest Konadu Asiedu.
Our work in the last decade has also exposed another gap: that between academic knowledge and its practical, widespread use. Researchers are uncovering critical findings with enormous potential for public health. Unfortunately, too often, their findings only end up in academic journals and are not used further.
With our partners, we are striving to open and expand access to valuable knowledge, making it more equitable and easier to use. With The Global Health Network, we are focused on knowledge management (page 29). With The Aga Khan University, we are pursuing knowledge translation (page 33). With partners in multiple locations, we are translating scientific knowledge into practical, efficient tools that can be scaled globally for meaningful health and development impact.
The work is ongoing. Nevertheless, after 10 years, we wanted to pause and reflect on what we and our partners have accomplished together. Now is also an excellent opportunity to say “thank you” as we share our learnings from these years with partners and new breastfeeding alliances at home in Switzerland.
Since 2020, we have amplified our local focus. We opened a public breastfeeding room in Frauenfeld in 2021. We are building a Swiss-wide breastfeeding alliance, bringing together organizations engaged for breastfeeding, government, academia, healthcare professionals, opinion leaders and influencers to give breastfeeding a higher standing in Swiss society and politics and to improve the health and well-being of local children, mothers and families. This is just the beginning.
Neither the Foundation’s collaborative achievements nor its plans would be possible without the strategic and operational leadership of Dr. Katharina Lichtner. I want to thank her profoundly for developing the Foundation’s long-term strategy and for her day-to-day work to implement it. I also wish to thank the Team for their work to carry out this strategy and the Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Board for their wise counsel. Finally, I wish to thank my colleagues on the Foundation Board. They are committed, passionate, and their experience is invaluable in steering the Foundation forward for long-term, sustainable impact.
When the United Nations set forth the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, the Foundation was in its infancy. Today, it is an honor to support the goals linked to maternal and child health, carrying my friend Olle Larsson and his family’s vision forward in Switzerland and abroad.
The Foundation, together with partners both dear and new, is embarking on its second decade. The vision remains unchanged: a world where every child has an optimum start in life through the benefits of breastmilk. Please join us.