Importance of Breastfeeding for Health and Well-being in UK

This study material aims to create awareness about the importance of breastfeeding for health and well-being in UK. It explains the benefits of breastfeeding and the policies and initiatives taken by the government and organizations to promote it. The target audience is women and people who can influence them. The study material also discusses health promotion policies and theories relevant to breastfeeding. The strengths and limitations of the artefact are also highlighted.

WELL-BEING
Aim: To create awareness and spread importance of
breastfeeding among people of UK through the artefact. Further,
benefits of breastfeeding will be explained in detail to encourage
more people to concern about the self-care.
Objectives:
 To improve health and well-being of women, infants,
families and children.
 Increase the proportion of mothers who breastfeed
their babies
Health-promotion enables people to increase control over their own
health through various interventions that are designed to benefit and
protect individual health so that they can live quality life over a long
period of time (Payne and Quigley, 2017).
The major limitation of this artefact would be that all policies for the
breastfeeding are made either on international or national level and there are no
polices that are developed regions or state wise so that greater reach and
understanding can be developed to even non health sectors of societies (Visram
and Hunter, 2019)
Target audiences:
Primary target audience would be women while the secondary audience would
be people who would influence these women in some or other ways.
This was based on five strategies that are essential for success which
includes: Building an efficient health public policy for all the people so that
obstacles can be identified and removed in non-health sectors, creating
supportive environments and protecting all natural resources, strengthening
community actions, developing personal knowledge as well as skills to deal
with all chronic illness and injuries in the future and lastly change the focus
of health services by providing clinical and curative services (Brown, 2017).
For example, in context of above topic, there is already national breastfeeding policy published
in 2015 that aims to protect, promote and support breastfeeding for six months of life (Regan
and Brown, 2019). It aims to achieve optimal infant and young child feeding by supporting all
the mothers who wish to continue breastfeeding with appropriate complementary foods even
after six months.
The relative strengths of artefact in terms of meeting overall objectives
could be that it would be helpful in making more people aware about the
current conditions across boundaries.
Books and journals
Grant, A.and et.al., 2018. Availability of breastfeeding peer support in the United
Kingdom: A cross‐sectional study. Maternal & Child Nutrition.14(1). p.e12476.
Payne, S. and Quigley, M.A., 2017. Breastfeeding and infant hospitalisation: analysis of
the UK 2010 Infant Feeding Survey. Maternal & child nutrition.13(1). p.e12263.
Background:
Breastfeeding is very important as it protects against various sickness,
allergies and diseases. Various infections are also prevented as all
necessary nutrients are supplied in proper proportions (Grant and et.al.,
2018).
Another theory that can be linked to breastfeeding topic could be Tannahill’s model of health
promotion that believes on three elements
Prevention: Reducing or avoiding risks of diseases and ill health that are caused due to
several problems.
Health education: That means that more people should be communicated so that well-being
can be promoted and ill health can be prevented through enhancing the knowledge.
Health protection: Guard population through legislative, social and financial measures.

NOTES:
Objectives:
 Guide individuals in making informed health decisions.
 Encourage collaboration across various sectors.
 To measure the impact of prevention activities.
Background: Breastfeeding is gaining support and popularity as it is considered as ideal
source of nutrition. Moreover, it is important concern as UK has the lowest rates of
breastfeeding. Also, breastfeeding requires big time commitment from the mothers especially
in the beginning. As breastfeeding schedule can be sometimes harder for some moms
especially when they are at travel, work or at some place. Therefore, all the national policies
and legislations advice and support new mothers to encourage this practice. These policies
are made to improve the breastfeeding rates on area based approach and all the broader
determinants of social inequalities. Further it is said that breastfeeding has long termed
benefits that help to improve the IQ of baby as well as helpful in improving the personal and
social developments. The milk is also beneficial for any premature baby because it contains
the antibodies, hormones and other factors that are essential for personal growth and
developments. There are several ways through women choose to breastfeed such as exclusive
breastfeeding, combining breastfeeding and formula feeding, breastfeeding along with
complementary foods, comfort nursing etc. breastfeeding provides emotional support and
feeling of security. Moreover, breastfeed is cheaper and quicker than formula feeding but
mothers in UK who has started this activity stop to breast feed before they like and this is
major concern which has encouraged policy-maker so set targets and work upon it.
Health promotion policy supports governments, communities and individuals to cope up with
the challenges of health. This is done through building up various healthy public policies,
creating supportive environments and strengthening skills and action of the communities.
Moreover, this policy consist of three elements such as good governance of health, creating
health literacy among vast groups and planning to promote good health in various target
cities. Health promotion theory that is relevant with the breastfeeding artefact can be linked
with Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion that came out first in Ottawa Canada in 1986
aimed at “health for all” by the year 2000. The policy was able to maintain its relevance in
the present world but still the UK people over emphasis on personal responsibility as well
behavioral change rather than solving the fundamental societal wide issues. Further, one of

the major key elements in Ottawa charter is that it made preventive health promotion as
priority. This means that it focuses on promoting health by making it easier for the people to
stop the risk behavior patterns and more actively participate in protective behaviors.
Moreover, Charter aimed that all women and men should be actively involved in each phase
of planning, implementation and evaluation of health promotion activities. There were some
organizations that operated in accordance with the principles of charter such as few hospitals,
primary care partnerships, non-government organization, community health services etc
(Breastfeeding, 2021). In regard to breastfeeding too, many UK agencies such as food safety
issued guidance to support safe preparation of formula milk in regard to flooding and
contamination of local water supplies.
Another example is, the BDA (British Dietetic Association) that is professional associations'
and trade union and is the largest organization of food and nutritional professionals. The
association aims to inform, represent, protect and support its members. Also, BDA policy in
UK supports breastfeeding as it considers it is optimum form of nutrition for babies and
protect from various health diseases. This initiative was done as rate of breastfeeding was
found very low in UK and thus they wish to improve these rates by active promotion and
providing support and advice to parents to promote the same (Wise, 2021). Further BDA does
not encourage breast milk substitutes and believe that they should not be marketed in public.
Also, all health professionals should review responsibilities to promote breastfeeding.
The strengths that this artefact could have is that it would be helpful in creating higher
intentions and positive attitude among the individuals towards the breastfeeding. In the
current era where most of the consumers use mass media this artefact would be helpful in
positively influencing the perceived social norms of breastfeeding (Myers, Page and Emmott,
2021). Moreover, such form of artefact would be proved to be effective to convey health
education information in the easiest manner that would greater impacts on minds of
individuals that will help them to retain the information for longer period of time than other
modes of conveying. Also, it would be helpful in creating a better vision by lowering the
rates of infant mortality as it would be available in various public areas such as government
hospitals, public places, various market places etc. Further, information would be passed
easily through this artifact and will be proved as effective source of communication and
proved beneficial to even less educated workforce.

Major problems that may be faced relating to this artifact could be that if very limited people
are aware and those who are not aware negatively influence the other sections of society.
Hence, small improvement in limited area cannot bring large changes in the overall growth,
progress and development of the societies. These perceptions can be proved to be potential
barrier for increasing the breastfeeding duration rates. Moreover, once the whole artifact is
prepared than it would be difficult to make certain changes or corrections in future and hence
can be proved less flexible than other sources of medium in which information can be
modified anytime. Also, content has to be reduced to get to the point but selecting what need
to be included is difficult as it needs to ensure reliability so that breastfeeding may create
positive impacts on users. Further this artifact would not be able to gather ready feedback
from the readers and hence it would be difficult to analyses the success of the breastfeeding
events. Therefore, the areas of changes and adjustments will remain unknown and hence
success cannot be tracked and measured on regular basis.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Myers, S., Page, A. E. and Emmott, E. H., 2021. The differential role of practical and
emotional support in infant feeding experience in the UK. Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society B. 376(1827). p.20200034.
Visram, S. and Hunter, T., 2019. Breastfeeding-related social media: an online survey of UK
mothers’ perceptions. European Journal of Public Health. 29(Supplement_4), pp.ckz187-
130.
Wise, P., 2021. Improving population health by supporting breastfeeding better. Perspectives
in Public Health.141(5). pp.255-257.
Regan, S. and Brown, A., 2019. Experiences of online breastfeeding support: Support and
reassurance versus judgement and misinformation. Maternal & Child
Nutrition.15(4).p.e12874.
Brown, A., 2017. Breastfeeding as a public health responsibility: A review of the
evidence. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics.30(6). pp.759-770.
Online
Breastfeeding. 2021. [Online]. Available
through:<https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/breastfeeding>.