November 12, 2013

expert reaction to launch of feasibility study paying mothers to breastfeed

The SMC hosted the launch of a feasibility study to assess whether giving shopping vouchers to mothers who start and continue breastfeeding from the birth of their child could raise breastfeeding rates.

Professor Laurence Moore, Scientific Committee, National Prevention Research Initiative (NPRI)* said:

 “Breastfed babies suffer fewer stomach upsets, fewer ear and chest infections, less eczema, and are less likely to develop childhood cancers, diabetes, obesity and heart disease.  Women who have breastfed are less likely to suffer from breast and ovarian cancers. This is why the World Health Organisation and all four UK health departments recommend that babies should be breastfed for at least six months.  Despite the many initiatives that have been tried over the years, UK breastfeeding rates remain stubbornly low with an inevitable cost to the NHS.

“A number of UK and international studies are looking at whether financial incentives might change health behaviour.  These include schemes that pay pregnant women to try to stop smoking or that offer financial rewards to patients who keep taking their medication.  This is a feasibility study – we don’t know if it will be effective or not. In the case of breastfeeding, where the benefit to mother, child and society is so great, it’s worth finding out whether such a novel intervention might work.”

Prof Susan Jebb, Professor of Diet and Population Health at the University of Oxford, said:

“We know that breastfeeding has long term benefits for the baby and most mothers in the UK have now heard the ‘breast is best’ message loud and clear.  Yet despite years of health promotion breast feeding rates are still low and socially patterned.  

“Financial incentives have proved modestly effectively in changing some other health-related behaviours, but it is not clear whether this might enhance breast feeding rates, especially the maintenance of breast feeding.  This type of intervention can be readily studied in a research trial and finding out whether it is effective or not is the first step. If it passes this hurdle we need to assess whether it is also cost effective. Then we need a public conversation about whether this should be adopted into policy. It’s important not to condone or condemn this until we have clear evidence of whether or not it may be effective.”

*The NPRI funds research aimed at improving health and at preventing diseases or conditions including cancer, heart and circulatory diseases, diabetes, obesity, stroke and dementia. The Initiative supports research on behaviours associated with significant risks to health, such as poor diet, physical inactivity, smoking and alcohol consumption, and on the environmental factors that influence those behaviours.  It is made up of the following funding partners: Alzheimer’s Research Trust; Alzheimer’s Society; Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council; British Heart Foundation; Cancer Research UK; Chief Scientist Office, Scottish Government Health Directorates; Department of Health; Diabetes UK; Economic and Social Research Council; Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council; Food Standards Agency; Health & Social Care Research & Development Office for Northern Ireland; Medical Research Council; The Stroke Association; Welsh Assembly Government; World Cancer Research Fund.