A MARCELLA NIEHOFF SCHOOL OF NURSING SCIENTIST has been awarded a $2.57 million National Institutes of Health grant for her research on how to help extremely premature infants—those born so early they may not be able to breathe, suck, or swallow on their own—learn to eat.

Assistant Professor Thao Griffith’s oral feeding intervention, the Multisensory Early Oral Administration of Human Milk, or M-MILK, targets babies born between 23 and 32 weeks’ gestation. Thirty-nine weeks is considered full term.

Many extremely premature infants face lengthy stays in neonatal intensive care and rely on feeding tubes to survive. M-MILK, through the seemingly simple act of giving them droplets of human milk, aims to help them learn to feed without medical assistance.

“The idea is to support that innate development that they would have had if they were in the womb,” said Griffith, recipient of the five-year grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development. “The goal is to have them feed like any other baby so they can go home earlier and without the complication of a feeding tube.”

The M-MILK intervention starts on day three of life, when caregivers place milk on the baby’s lips. If the infant responds positively, more milk is given each day in tiny increments. Over time, the baby learns to ingest milk orally and the feeding tube can be removed.

That means potentially less time in the NICU and less stress on the baby.

Karen Saban, the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing Endowed Chair for Research, called Griffith’s study “groundbreaking research supporting our tiniest patients.”