Availability of breastfeeding peer support in the United Kingdom: A cross‐sectional study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Peer support is recommended by the World Health Organization for the initiation and continuation of breastfeeding, and this recommendation is included in United Kingdom (U.K.) guidance. There is a lack of information about how, when, and where breastfeeding peer support was provided in the U.K. We aimed to generate an overview of how peer support is delivered in the U.K. and to gain an understanding of challenges for implementation. We surveyed all U.K. infant feeding coordinators (n = 696) who were part of U.K.-based National Infant Feeding Networks, covering 177 National Health Service (NHS) organisations. We received 136 responses (individual response rate 19.5%), covering 102 U.K. NHS organisations (organisational response rate 58%). We also searched NHS organisation websites to obtain data on the presence of breastfeeding peer support. Breastfeeding peer support was available in 56% of areas. However, coverage within areas was variable. The provision of training and ongoing supervision, and peer-supporter roles, varied significantly between services. Around one third of respondents felt that breastfeeding peer-support services were not well integrated with NHS health services. Financial issues were commonly reported to have a negative impact on service provision. One quarter of respondents stated that breastfeeding peer support was not accessed by mothers from poorer social backgrounds. Overall, there was marked variation in the provision of peer-support services for breastfeeding in the U.K. A more robust evidence base is urgently needed to inform guidance on the structure and provision of breastfeeding peer-support services.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".