Data on breastfeeding and state policies in the United States

Breastfeeding is critically important to maternal and child health in the United States. Examining the relationship between breastfeeding outcomes and state policies requires multidisciplinary efforts to link data from various sources. This article describes an integrated dataset that was used to understand the relationship between participation in a nutrition assistance program and low-income children's breastfeeding outcomes [1]. This dataset merged public health information from the National Immunization Surveys Data from 2006 to 2016 and matching state policy data from the Correlates of State Policy Project (CSPP), the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Economic Research Services (USDA/ERS) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Policy Index, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Census Bureau. The integrated dataset compiles variables in breastfeeding outcome, child's and mother's socio-demographic characteristics, and state-level policy measures, including SNAP participation rates, SNAP policy indices, unemployment rates, and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) enrollment rates. This multidisciplinary dataset included information on a total of 219,904 children with 98 variables.