Marketing Breastfeeding--reversing Corporate Influence on Infant Feeding Practices

Overview

Journal J Urban Health

Publisher Springer

Specialty General Medicine

Date 2008 May 9

PMID 18463985

Citations 14

Authors

Deborah L Kaplan

Kristina M Graff

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Breast milk is the gold standard for infant nutrition and the only necessary food for the first 6 months of an infant's life. Infant formula is deficient and inferior to breast milk in meeting infants' nutritional needs. The infant formula industry has contributed to low rates of breastfeeding through various methods of marketing and advertising infant formula. Today, in New York City, although the majority of mothers initiate breastfeeding (approximately 85%), a minority of infants is breastfed exclusively at 8 weeks postpartum (approximately 25%). The article reviews the practices of the formula industry and the impact of these practices. It then presents the strategic approach taken by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and its partners to change hospital practices and educate health care providers and the public on the benefits of breast milk, and provides lessons learned from these efforts to make breastfeeding the normative and usual method of infant feeding in New York City.

Citing Articles

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A repeated cross-sectional analysis of breastfeeding initiation rates in Ireland for two decades and 10 recommended priorities for improvement.

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'': the ecology of infant formula in rural communities in Central Mexico.

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