Breastfeeding
feeding Report Card – the latest data that is currently available – shows that more than 80% of infants start out receiving human milk, yet just over a quarter of them are exclusively breastfed through six months.
Black infant-mother pairs not only have the lowest breastfeeding rates in South Carolina, but they also have the lowest rates nationally, compared to other U.S. racial and ethnic groups. More recent data from the National Vital Statistics System of U.S. infants born in 2020 and 2021, shows that only 74.5% of Black infants were breastfed, compared with non-Hispanic Asian infants (90.1%), non-Hispanic white infants (84.0%) and Hispanic infants (86.8%), based on analysis of birth records collected by the CDC.
Black infants are also more likely to die from SIDS and to be born prematurely. So increasing breastfeeding among Black families could lead to saving significantly more Black infant lives.
The Southeast U.S. is where the widest racial gaps in breastfeeding exist. In addition, infants living in Southern states are less likely to achieve national goals for breastfeeding at 6 or 12 months old compared to infants living in other regions of the country.
Removing barriers to breastfeeding
Reducing barriers is critical to closing racial and geographic gaps in breastfeeding and allowing U.S. mothers and their infants the opportunity to benefit from the life-saving qualities of human milk. Studies show that addressing work-related barriers by making investments in paid family leave, for example, could increase exclusive breastfeeding rates by 15%. The U.S. is one of the only countries in the world that does not provide national paid family leave.
Workplaces that support breastfeeding breaks and provide safe and clean spaces for expressing and storing human milk are also important in promoting breastfeeding. Given that U.S. women’s labor force participation rates are at a record high, the importance of reducing barriers in the workplace cannot be overstated. The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates that every U.S. dollar invested in breastfeeding yields $35 in economic returns.
Societal investments in breastfeeding-friendly workplace policies will not only yield cost savings and extend breastfeeding rates, but they will shift the burden of breastfeeding from simply being an individual choice to being a public health priority.
Tisha Felder receives funding from the Patient Centered Research Outcomes Institute (PCORI) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). Joynelle Jackson receives funding from Patient Centered Research Outcomes Institute (PCORI).This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.