Achieving healthy people 2030 breastfeeding targets in the United States: challenges and opportunities

OBJECTIVES: To estimate the national and states-specific gaps in breastfeeding rates in the United States for achieving the Healthy People 2030 (HP2030) targets, which are: 42.4% of infants to exclusively breastfeed through 6th months, and 54.1% of infants to breastfeed through 12th month of age. STUDY DESIGN: The differences between the HP2030 breastfeeding targets and the respective state-specific baseline rates in the 2022 National Immunization Survey report for infants born in 2019 were computed. RESULTS: The gaps in breastfeeding rates for achieving either of the two HP2030 targets varied greatly. Relative to their 2019 baseline estimates, 7 U.S. states need to increase breastfeeding rates between 100% and 207%, 27 states between 50% and 99%, 9 states and 2 territories between 20% and 49% and the remaining 7, between 0% and 19%. CONCLUSIONS: Thirty-four of 50 (68%) states face huge gaps in achieving the HP2030 breastfeeding targets.