Fishers families now have a local place to donate and pick up donor human milk.

The Fishers Health Department and The Milk Bank held a ribbon-cutting Thursday to open the city’s first Milk Depot and Milk Express. The site is at the health department, inside the Fishers Community Center.

Approved donors can drop off frozen milk there. Parents and caregivers can pick up pasteurized donor milk they have ordered through The Milk Bank.

“This is a super exciting day for The Milk Bank,” said Freedom Kolb, the organization’s CEO. “To bring together a depot and express site in one convenient location is such an incredible gift to the babies we serve and to the community.”

Kolb said pasteurized donor human milk is one of the most effective tools for protecting medically fragile babies and reducing infant mortality.

“Similar to blood banking, it’s considered a standard of care and life-saving medication,” she said. “We step in for all those who are born too small, too sick or too soon.”

Donated milk supports hospitals and families, including premature and medically fragile infants in neonatal intensive care units. Families may also use donor milk to meet a medical need, to bridge a gap in the early postpartum period or to support breastfeeding goals.

Kolb, who lives in Fishers, praised the city and its health department for “prioritizing all of their residents, even their tiniest citizens.”

She said the new site also helps protect the regional supply of donor milk. That supply serves more than 120 hospitals, including the local hospitals where Fishers babies are born.

“We hope that it’s meaningful to moms who choose to donate and make that life-saving difference,” Kolb said, “but also meaningful for the babies in our community that need that milk, that we can step in exactly at the moment of need and remove those barriers.”

Milk Express pick-ups and approved donor drop-offs are available Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Hours run until 7 p.m. on Thursdays, and the site is also open on select Saturdays. Milk Express orders are coordinated directly through The Milk Bank.