Understanding attitudes and barriers to breastfeeding
Halton Borough Council
- Depth interviews
- Focus groups
- Stakeholder engagement
Brief
Breastfeeding rates across Halton are significantly lower than the UK average
Halton BC wanted to understand local attitudes towards breastfeeding, especially in young women and to use that to inform a campaign to increase rates and system recommendations to improve barriers
Challenge
Our primary objective was to understand why so many women in Halton who could breastfeed, choose not to do so from the outset. We carried out quant and qual research with expectant and new mums as well as their partners. Recruitment for participants was done through the family hub and midwifery networks. Research questions were structured around attitudes to breastfeeding/ key influencers pre and post-natal/ stages of decision-making, barriers or challenges to sustaining breastfeeding and the testing of various campaign approaches and breastfeeding messaging.
We engaged with just under 200 individuals, giving us rich insight to shape a communications campaign and provide recommendations back to system partners as to how they could reduce communication and understanding barriers in their ongoing dialogue with expectant and new mums. We used the focus groups to recruit a cohort to engage in the co-design of the campaign including messaging, imagery and collateral formats.
The final campaign centred on the notion that even a short period of breastfeeding could be linked to direct benefits for an infant as an encouragement to try. We then created a series of incremental time periods correlated with the additional benefits these extended periods would deliver to baby mum, all backed up by evidence endorsed by the WHO. The campaign umbrella was Breastfeeding in Baby Steps.
