Abstract
Background: In total, 81% of women in the UK start breastfeeding, but fewer than half continue beyond
6 weeks. Peer support in the early postnatal period may encourage women to breastfeed for longer.
Objective: To develop a breastfeeding peer-support intervention based on motivational interviewing (MI)
for breastfeeding maintenance and to test the feasibility of delivering it to mothers in areas with high
levels of social deprivation.
Design: Intervention development and a non-randomised multisite feasibility study.
Setting: Community maternity services in three areas with high levels of social deprivation and low
breastfeeding initiation rates in England and Wales.
Participants: Pregnant women considering breastfeeding. Women who did not plan to breastfeed,
who had a clinical reason that precluded breastfeeding continuation or who were unable to consent
were excluded.
Intervention: The intervention Mam-Kind was informed by a survey of infant feeding co-ordinators,
rapid literature review, focus groups with service users and peer supporters and interviews with health-care
professionals and a Stakeholder Advisory Group. It consisted of face-to-face contact at 48 hours after birth
and proactive one-to-one peer support from the Mam-Kind buddy for 2 weeks, followed by mother-led
contact for a further 2–6 weeks.
Main outcome measures: Recruitment and retention of Mam-Kind buddies, uptake of Mam-Kind by
participants, feasibility of delivering Mam-Kind as specified and of data collection methods, and
acceptability of Mam-Kind to mothers, buddies and health-care professionals.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 172 |
| Journal | Health Technology Assessment |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 77 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 31 Dec 2017 |
Bibliographical note
AcknowledgementsWe would like to acknowledge Professor Stephen Rollnick for his contribution to the development of the intervention, the delivery of MI training and the integration of MI in the intervention.
We would like to acknowledge Mala Mann for her contribution to the literature search, and are grateful to Cheryl McQuire for her contribution to the content analysis section.
We would like to acknowledge Kirsten McEwan for her statistical analysis of the survey data and Giles Greene for creating the maps in the survey.
We would also like to thank Joanna Lourenco, Avril Jones and Nicki Symes, members of the Stakeholder Advisory Group, for providing their thoughts and feedback to the study team. We would also like to acknowledge Mary Whitmore for her contribution to the Study Management Group and site set-up.
We would like to thank Sam Clarkson for designing the database.
We would like to thank Sue Channon and Helen Stanton for independently coding data.
We would also like to thank all of the administrative staff within the South East Wales Trials Unit who worked on the study for their hard work and support.
Finally, we would like to thank the participants and their families, the peer supporters and the health-care professionals who kindly took the time to participate in the study