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Infant feeding practices and parental perceptions during the 2022 United States infant formula shortage crisis

BACKGROUND: In May of 2022, parents living in the United States experienced a dramatic infant formula shortage caused by supply chain issues and the recall of several infant formula products over contamination concerns. METHODS: An anonymous, electronic, cross-sectional survey was designed to unders...

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Autores principales: Cernioglo, Karina, Smilowitz, Jennifer T.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10290398/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37355589
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12887-023-04132-9
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author Cernioglo, Karina
Smilowitz, Jennifer T.
author_facet Cernioglo, Karina
Smilowitz, Jennifer T.
author_sort Cernioglo, Karina
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In May of 2022, parents living in the United States experienced a dramatic infant formula shortage caused by supply chain issues and the recall of several infant formula products over contamination concerns. METHODS: An anonymous, electronic, cross-sectional survey was designed to understand infant feeding practices, parental experience and perceived support during the crisis. RESULTS: Ninety-nine parents that lived in the U.S. and fulfilled study criteria completed the survey. 66% of respondents were female, and 75% of respondents were recipients of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infant Children (WIC). Parental mean age was 30.0 years, and the mean infant age was 26.8 weeks. The number of individuals that used at least one unsafe infant feeding practice increased from 8% before the infant formula shortage to 48.5% during the shortage (p < 0.001). 79% of parents fed their infants U.S. infant formula brands and 39% of parents fed their infants imported infant formula brands before the shortage which were significantly reduced during the shortage to 27% (p < 0.005) and 11% (p < 0.005), respectively. The percentage of parents that reported infant feeding practices before and during the infant formula shortage significantly increased from 2 to 28% for banked donor milk use (p < 0.005); 5–26% for use of human milk from informal sharing (p < 0.005); and 2–29% for use of watered-down infant formula (p < 0.005). The resources that parents reported as most helpful in navigating the crisis differed by parental sex and WIC recipient status and included other parents, friends, and family; lactation consultants; healthcare providers; and WIC. CONCLUSIONS: Our study found that feeding practices in response to the infant formula shortage may pose health risks to infants including nutrition and food insecurity. These data suggest the need for policy changes within regulatory and the healthcare system to provide families with clinical prenatal and postnatal lactation support, access to pasteurized banked donor milk, and access to more commercially available products. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12887-023-04132-9.
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spelling pubmed-102903982023-06-25 Infant feeding practices and parental perceptions during the 2022 United States infant formula shortage crisis Cernioglo, Karina Smilowitz, Jennifer T. BMC Pediatr Research BACKGROUND: In May of 2022, parents living in the United States experienced a dramatic infant formula shortage caused by supply chain issues and the recall of several infant formula products over contamination concerns. METHODS: An anonymous, electronic, cross-sectional survey was designed to understand infant feeding practices, parental experience and perceived support during the crisis. RESULTS: Ninety-nine parents that lived in the U.S. and fulfilled study criteria completed the survey. 66% of respondents were female, and 75% of respondents were recipients of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infant Children (WIC). Parental mean age was 30.0 years, and the mean infant age was 26.8 weeks. The number of individuals that used at least one unsafe infant feeding practice increased from 8% before the infant formula shortage to 48.5% during the shortage (p < 0.001). 79% of parents fed their infants U.S. infant formula brands and 39% of parents fed their infants imported infant formula brands before the shortage which were significantly reduced during the shortage to 27% (p < 0.005) and 11% (p < 0.005), respectively. The percentage of parents that reported infant feeding practices before and during the infant formula shortage significantly increased from 2 to 28% for banked donor milk use (p < 0.005); 5–26% for use of human milk from informal sharing (p < 0.005); and 2–29% for use of watered-down infant formula (p < 0.005). The resources that parents reported as most helpful in navigating the crisis differed by parental sex and WIC recipient status and included other parents, friends, and family; lactation consultants; healthcare providers; and WIC. CONCLUSIONS: Our study found that feeding practices in response to the infant formula shortage may pose health risks to infants including nutrition and food insecurity. These data suggest the need for policy changes within regulatory and the healthcare system to provide families with clinical prenatal and postnatal lactation support, access to pasteurized banked donor milk, and access to more commercially available products. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12887-023-04132-9. BioMed Central 2023-06-24 /pmc/articles/PMC10290398/ /pubmed/37355589 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12887-023-04132-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Cernioglo, Karina
Smilowitz, Jennifer T.
Infant feeding practices and parental perceptions during the 2022 United States infant formula shortage crisis
title Infant feeding practices and parental perceptions during the 2022 United States infant formula shortage crisis
title_full Infant feeding practices and parental perceptions during the 2022 United States infant formula shortage crisis
title_fullStr Infant feeding practices and parental perceptions during the 2022 United States infant formula shortage crisis
title_full_unstemmed Infant feeding practices and parental perceptions during the 2022 United States infant formula shortage crisis
title_short Infant feeding practices and parental perceptions during the 2022 United States infant formula shortage crisis
title_sort infant feeding practices and parental perceptions during the 2022 united states infant formula shortage crisis
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10290398/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37355589
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12887-023-04132-9
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