Ringing Up about Breastfeeding: a randomised controlled trial exploring early telephone peer support for...

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Maternal and Child Health
• Health Services Research

Background:

• Breastfeeding offers significant health benefits for mothers and infants.
• In Australia, many women initiate breastfeeding but discontinue early, failing to meet WHO recommendations.
• Disadvantaged groups disproportionately bear the health burdens of not breastfeeding.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if proactive telephone peer support increases breastfeeding duration in the postnatal period.
• To assess the effectiveness of telephone peer support in increasing the proportion of infants breastfed at six months.

Main Methods:

• A two-arm randomized controlled trial involving primiparous women in Melbourne, Australia.
• Intervention group received proactive telephone peer support postpartum; control group received usual care.
• Primary outcome: proportion of infants breastfed for at least six months, analyzed by intention-to-treat.

Main Results:

• The study aimed to increase the proportion of infants receiving any breast milk at six months from 46% to 56% with peer support.
• A supplementary multivariate analysis will address baseline differences between groups.

Conclusions:

• This is the first Australian randomized controlled trial to evaluate proactive peer telephone support for breastfeeding.
• The trial sites were chosen to include a high proportion of women from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• The study will assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of this breastfeeding support intervention.