BC Women’s Hospital designated “baby friendly”

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 51, No. 1, January February 2009, Page 29 News

BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre has been designated a World Health Organization and UNICEF Baby-Friendly Hospital. Created in 1991, the initiative acknowledges hospitals whose maternity services actively promote breastfeeding of babies by new mothers.

Research has shown that breastfeeding provides significant health benefits for both babies and their mothers. Newborns are at less risk of gastrointestinal infections, respiratory infections, urinary tract infections, ear infections, allergy-related conditions, and insulin-dependent diabetes. Women who breastfeed have a lower risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, hip fractures, and low bone density, as well as type 2 diabetes.

. BC Women’s Hospital designated “baby friendly”. BCMJ, Vol. 51, No. 1, January, February, 2009, Page(s) 29 - News.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
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For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

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