Category: Infant Feeding

By UNICEF (2012)

This report looks at how raising breastfeeding rates could save money through improving health outcomes. It finds that for five illnesses, moderate increases in breastfeeding would translate into cost savings for the NHS of £40 million and tens of thousands of fewer hospital admissions and GP consultations. It analyses three conditions: cognitive ability, childhood obesity and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and finds that modest improvements in breastfeeding rates could save millions of pounds.

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Perez-Escamilla, R. et al. Journal of Human Lactation, 2012; 28(2): 118-121

Strong evidence-based advocacy efforts have now translated into high level political support and concrete goals for improving breastfeeding outcomes among women in the United States. In spite of this, major challenge remain for promoting, supporting and especially for protecting breastfeeding in the country.

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Callaghan, JE. et al. Psychology & Health, 2012; 27(8): 938-955

The promotion of breastfeeding is an important focus of intervention for professionals working to improve infant health outcomes. Literature in this area focuses largely on ‘choices’ and ‘barriers to breastfeeding’. It is our argument, however, that women’s cultural context plays a key role in infant feeding ‘choices’. In this article, we explore contested representations of infant feeding and infant feeding choices in public debates conducted on a large British parenting website.

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