Breastfeeding promotion

Breastfeeding promotion refers to coordinated activities and policies to promote health among women, newborns and infants through breastfeeding.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life to achieve optimal health and development, followed by complementary foods while continuing breastfeeding for up to two years or beyond. However, currently fewer than 40% of infants under six months of age are exclusively breastfed worldwide.

Public health awareness events such as World Breastfeeding Week, as well as training of health professionals and planning, aim to increase this number.

Breastfeeding promotion is a movement that came about in the twentieth century in response to high rates of bottle-feeding among mothers, and in recognition of the many health benefits to both mothers and children that breastfeeding offers. While infant formula had been introduced in developed countries in the 1920s as a healthy way to feed one's children, the emergence of research on health benefits of breastfeeding precipitated the beginning of the breastfeeding promotion movement in the United States. In the 1950s, La Leche League meetings began. The United States began incorporating benefits specific to breastfeeding promotion into its Women, Infants, and Children program in 1972. In 1989, WIC state agencies began being required to spend funds targeted at breastfeeding support and promotion, including the provision of education materials in different languages and the purchase of breast pumps and other supplies. In 1998, WIC state agencies were authorized to use funds earmarked for food to purchase breast pumps.

Each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention release a Breastfeeding Report Card, detailing breastfeeding rates and promotion programs nationally and in all fifty states. In 2013, 76.5% of US women had ever breastfed their children; 16.4% exclusively breastfed up to six months of age. The Healthy People 2020 target for exclusive breastfeeding at six months is 25.5%. The proportion of infants who were breastfed exclusively or non-exclusively at six months was 35% in 2000 and increased to 49% by 2010.

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