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African
Americans Less
Likely To Breast Feed
NEW YORK (Reuters
Health) - Regardless of education or income, African-American
women are less likely than other US women to breast-feed their
babies, new study findings show. Researchers speculate that this
difference accounts for a large part of the racial disparity in
the nation's infant mortality rate.
Experts agree
that breast milk is preferable to infant formula because it provides
babies with a natural balance of essential nutrients, antibodies
and enzymes. In addition, breast milk is easier for infants to
digest, and research shows it helps protect them from infections,
diarrhea and allergies.
But many women
choose to bottle-feed, and studies have found that certain women--those
with lower incomes and those without a college education, for
instance--are less likely to try breast-feeding.
To investigate
how race influences breast-feeding and how this plays into infant
mortality, researchers looked at data on nearly 1,100 women who
took part in a federal survey in 1995. All of the women had a
child 18 months of age or younger at the time of the interview.
The investigators
found that African-American women were only 40% as likely as non-black
women to have breast-fed their babies. And 83% of black women
who did not breast-feed said they made the decision because they
``preferred to bottle-feed.''
``Based on
our results, healthcare providers need to target the black community
so that the 'breast is best' message replaces a preference for
bottle-feeding,'' Dr. Renata Forste and colleagues at Brigham
Young University in Provo, Utah, write in the August issue of
the journal Pediatrics.
Getting out
this message is key, the researchers note, because their analysis
further showed that breast-feeding could make a dent in the higher-than-average
infant mortality rate among African Americans.
When they
looked at data on all of the women in the national survey for
1988 and 1995--more than 24,000 women in total--the investigators
determined that a lack of breast-feeding accounted for much of
the racial disparity in infant death rates in the US. In fact,
black babies were almost 50% more likely than non-black babies
to die before their first birthday. When Forste's team factored
in breast-feeding and low birth weight, the effect of race became
insignificant--suggesting that these two factors are equally important
in black infants' higher odds of dying.
``Thus, by
increasing breast-feeding among black women, the racial gap in
infant mortality should narrow,'' Forste and her colleagues write.
In 1997, they add, mortality among black babies in the US was
30% higher than that for white infants.
In addition
to race, Forste's team found that education, income and birthplace
also strongly influenced breast-feeding. College-educated women
were nearly twice as likely to breast-feed compared with those
with a high school diploma or less. And foreign-born women were
75% more likely to breast-feed than US-born women were.
As for the
reasons for not breast-feeding, only 10% of women cited job conflicts,
while 14% said a medical or physical problem prevented them from
doing so.
Overall, 57%
of the 1,100 women said they had ever breast-fed--65% of white
women and 30% of black women.
SOURCE:
Pediatrics 2001;108:291-296.
Reference
Source 89
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