Improving breastfeeding care & support in a large, urban, pediatric primary care practice

Human milk/breastfeeding is the gold standard for infant nutrition. Interventions in pediatric primary care could improve breastfeeding exclusivity and duration. Our specific aims were two-fold: 1) Accurately measure breastfeeding indicators and 2) Implement AAP Breastfeeding-Friendly Pediatric Office Practice Recommendations.

In 2018, a single, urban, large primary care pediatric practice initiated a Quality Improvement project to improve breastfeeding outcomes. Stakeholders met to discuss metrics of interest, develop documentation templates, review data capture, and plan interventions to support breastfeeding. Practice based interventions to improve measurement included: piloting documentation templates, incorporation of default templates office-wide, and developing tracking tools for both use of templates and breastfeeding outcomes. Interventions to support breastfeeding occurred simultaneously and included workflow redesign to increase nurse-provided breastfeeding education, partnering with community-based lactation consultants for outpatient support, staff education, and National Breastfeeding Month activities.

Since initiation of the data analytic tool, breastfeeding data has been analyzed from over 30,000 visits (86% Medicaid-insured, 82% Black race). Currently, 80% of providers use default templates that allow standardized data capture. At first newborn visit, 74% of infants were breastfed. At six months, 36% of infants were breastfed; 23% exclusively. Standardized documentation of infant feeding status improved and has remained consistent. Breastfeeding duration did not significantly improve despite practice interventions.

Pediatric primary care measurement tools are feasible and critical to understand breastfeeding continuation. Increased resources and interventions to support breastfeeding in Primary Care are necessary to improve outcomes.