Achieving healthy people 2030 breastfeeding targets in the United States: challenges and opportunities

To estimate the national and states-specific gaps in breastfeeding rates in the United States for achieving the Healthy People 2030 (HP2030) targets, which are: 42.4% of infants to exclusively breastfeed through 6th months, and 54.1% of infants to breastfeed through 12th month of age.

The differences between the HP2030 breastfeeding targets and the respective state-specific baseline rates in the 2022 National Immunization Survey report for infants born in 2019 were computed.

The gaps in breastfeeding rates for achieving either of the two HP2030 targets varied greatly. Relative to their 2019 baseline estimates, 7 U.S. states need to increase breastfeeding rates between 100% and 207%, 27 states between 50% and 99%, 9 states and 2 territories between 20% and 49% and the remaining 7, between 0% and 19%.

Thirty-four of 50 (68%) states face huge gaps in achieving the HP2030 breastfeeding targets.