PRAMS and Breastfeeding

The Importance of Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is associated with numerous health benefits for infants and mothers.^1,2 Benefits for infants include reduced risk of severe lower respiratory tract infection,³ diarrhea,⁴ childhood obesity,⁵ type 2 diabetes,⁶ sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS),⁷ and death from any cause.⁴ Benefits for women include reduced risk of breast⁸ and ovarian³ cancers and possibly reduced risk of postpartum depression, although the mechanism through which breastfeeding may reduce depression risk is not well understood.^9,10 Although U.S. breastfeeding rates are increasing, rates remain relatively low among some groups of women, particularly young women, black women, women at or below the federal poverty level, and women with less than a college education.^11-13 Many women stop breastfeeding within the first month after giving birth; their reasons for doing so include pain, difficulty initiating, concerns about infant satisfaction, inadequate milk production, and the need to return to work.^14,15

In 2011, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding, which highlighted current research on the health, psychosocial, economic, and environmental effects of breastfeeding and outlined steps family members, health care providers, researchers, employers, and communities can take to encourage and support breastfeeding.¹⁶ In 2010, HHS released Healthy People 2020, which provided updated national breastfeeding objectives for 2020, including to increase the proportion of infants who are ever breastfed to 81.9%, to increase the proportion who are breastfed at 6 months to 60.6%, to increase the proportion who are breastfed at 12 months to 34.1%, to increase the proportion who are exclusively breastfed at 3 months to 46.2%, and to increase the proportion who are exclusively breastfed at 6 months to 25.5%.¹⁷ Healthy People 2020 also introduced several new breastfeeding objectives,  including to increase the proportion of employers that have work site lactation support programs to 38.0%, to reduce the proportion of breastfed newborns who receive formula supplementation within the first 2 days of life to 14.2%, and to increase the proportion of live births that occur in facilities providing recommended care for lactating mothers and their babies to 8.1%.¹⁷ The 2010 CDC Breastfeeding Report Card for the United States shows that 75.0% of U.S. women who gave birth in 2007 initiated breastfeeding but that only 43.0% of those women were breastfeeding at 6 months.¹⁸

PRAMS Data to Action Success Stories on Breastfeeding

PRAMS collects data through mail surveys and follow-up telephone surveys and uses stratified sampling methods to obtain estimates of the prevalence of behaviors among women in various demographic groups. The surveys are administered 2–6 months after women give birth. Data results on breastfeeding from the PRAMS questionnaire. Read more about PRAMS Data To Action Success Stories.

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