Becoming (more) Breastfeeding Friendly in Ghana

Becoming (more) Breastfeeding Friendly in Ghana with the evidence-informed Becoming Breastfeeding Friendly (BBF) initiative. 

Researchers at the University of Ghana School of Public Health with colleagues from the Yale School of Public Health conducted social network analysis to identify 46 key unique policy multi sector actors – ranging from government agencies to media outlets – to discover what is needed to improve breastfeeding protection, promotion and support nationally.

Their findings have just been published by the International Breastfeeding Journal in this open access article.

“Strategically generating new and meaningful links between actors can help strengthen the breastfeeding environment by increasing the efficient flow of information and resources across relevant actors,” writes lead author Richmond Aryeetey, Associate Professor at the University of Ghana.

He and his colleagues investigated these roles and links following previous BBF findings that pinpointed suboptimal coordination among actors as a barrier to breastfeeding progress. Ghana implemented the BBF process in 2016 to help reverse declining national rates of exclusive breastfeeding.

The BBF Guide to Global Scale Up is led by the Yale School of Public Health with support from FLRF.