Abstract

PINTO, Tiago Vieira. Promotion, Protection and Support of Breastfeeding in the Community. Arq Med [online]. 2008, vol.22, n.2-3, pp.57-68. ISSN 2183-2447.

The World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months of life and complementary feeding until two years or even later, because of the health and well-being benefits for the baby and his mother, for the environment and society. In Portugal, National Health Plan establishes the need for breastfeeding promotion and assumes it as a perinatal health care quality indicator. Although those recommendations, breastfeeding rates are still behind the national targets. With this article we pretend to review those successful strategies to protect, promote and support breastfeeding in the community setting, during pregnancy and after birth. For that purpose we conducted a literature research in MEDLINE, CINAHL and SciELO Brazil combining the keywords “breastfeeding”, “programs”, “health pomotion”, and “health education”, and also in breastfeeding reference papers. We concluded that health education that combines acquisition of breastfeeding knowledge, appropriate skills and positive attitudes facing breastfeeding are the most successful strategies, since early pregnance until after birth, in the home setting. We also concluded that the whole family must be seen as a target of the interventions, principally those elements with an important role in women’s social space and in her decision-making, as father and grandmothers are.

Keywords : breastfeeding; program planning; health promotion; health education.

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