BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Policy
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1653377
A Comparison of U.S. Infant Feeding Policy Changes to Global Breastfeeding Collective Policy Priorities
Provisionally accepted
- 1Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, United States
- 2Oklahoma State University Department of Nutritional Sciences, Stillwater, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Introduction: Public policy plays an important role in shaping how infants are fed. The Global Breastfeeding Collective (GBC) provides a set of policy priorities for countries to promote, protect and support breastfeeding. The GBC uses scorecards to document progress toward meeting those priorities. The purpose of this study was to assess recent United States (U.S.) federal infant feeding policy changes against the GBC's policy priorities to identify areas of alignment and gaps for policies supporting optimal infant feeding.Methods: Changes in U.S. federal infant feeding legislation, regulation, and presidential documents between 2014-2023 were compared with and coded into GBC priority categories. Policy changes not aligned with GBC priorities were coded into additional non-GBC topic categories that were developed inductively.Results: Fifty-seven federal infant feeding policies were adopted or substantively modified within the study period. Of these, only 17 aligned with at least one of the GBC policy priorities. Forty-nine policies included changes that did not match GBC policy priorities. Policy changes that did not align with GBC priorities addressed infant formula manufacturing, lactation spaces, and breastfeeding supplies, among other topics.Although most recent federal infant feeding policy changes in the U.S. did not align with the breastfeeding policy priorities established by the GBC, opportunities to promote and protect breastfeeding were identified. Some U.S. breastfeeding policy changes outside of GBC priorities have potential to strengthen breastfeeding. CFR §106.40 CFR §106.50 CFR §106.
Keywords: breastfeeding, Global Breastfeeding Collective, Infant feeding, Infant Formula, policy
Received: 24 Jun 2025; Accepted: 14 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Harrigan, Schenk, Volpe, Hedrick, Khan and Misyak. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sarah A Misyak, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.