UC Health Milk Bank staff organize donations.

Last year, UC sponsored Assembly Bill 3059 (AB 3059), which aimed to increase access to donor milk for newborns and families in need. The new law, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2025, is already improving the lives of newborns and their families in California’s hospitals.

AB 3059 aimed to solve two major barriers for parents in need of donor milk by making donor milk an essential health benefit under commercial insurance plans — meaning that all parents with commercial insurance plans in California have access to medically necessary lifesaving donor milk and their plans will cover it. It also eliminated a regulatory barrier that previously required acute care hospitals to hold a tissue bank license to distribute donor milk.

With AB 3059’s passage, hospitals can now distribute donor milk to babies in their neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) when it comes from a milk bank with a tissue bank license, such as the University of California Health Milk Bank.

Read the whole story from UC Health