Low income women and physician breastfeeding advice: A regional assessment

Abstract

Objectives The aims of the pilot study presented here were to determine whether low income women were receiving compendious breastfeeding advice from their attending physicians.

Design This study assessed low income women’s reports of physician breastfeeding advice using a newly designed Likert scaled survey based on the American Surgeon General’s ‘Blueprint for Action on Breastfeeding’¹.

Setting Data was collected at a WIC Center in a midwestern American city. WIC is an acronym for Women, Infants, and Children and is a federally regulated programme that provides free formula and free food for low income women who are pregnant, or who are the mothers of children 5 years and under.

Methods Cumulative frequency distributions were used to assess physician breastfeeding advice. Likert scaled questions were used to allow for vacillating degrees of agreement or disagreement. Female participants, 19 years or older, were mothers of infant children and were defined as low income using federal guidelines.

Results Results of this study indicate that low income women are not being informed by their physicians of the multiple ways in which breastfeeding is beneficial for maternal and pediatric populations.

Conclusion The findings of this pilot study suggest that low income women are not receiving compendious breastfeeding information from their attending physicians. Results of this study indicate that physicians are informing low income women of some of the benefits associated with breastfeeding, but are neglecting to inform them of the various ways in which breastfeeding is beneficial for both maternal and pediatric populations.