Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Use of Mother's Milk Feeding for Very Low Birth Weight Infants in Massachusetts

Abstract

Objective: To examine the extent to which maternal race/ethnicity is associated with mother's milk use among hospitalized very low birth weight (VLBW) infants and maternal receipt of hospital breastfeeding support practices (human milk prenatal education, first milk expression <6 hours after delivery, lactation consultation <24 hours, any skin-to-skin care <1 month).

Study design: We studied 1318 mother-VLBW infant pairs in 9 Massachusetts level 3 neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) between January 2015 and November 2017. We estimated associations of maternal race/ethnicity with any and exclusive mother's milk on day 7, on day 28, and at discharge/transfer and hospital practices. We estimated HRs comparing the probability of continued milk use over the hospitalization by race/ethnicity and tested mediation by hospital practices, adjusting for birth weight and gestational age and including hospital and plurality as random effects.

Results: Mothers were 48% non-Hispanic white, 21% non-Hispanic black, and 20% Hispanic. Initiation of mother's milk was similar across groups, but infants of Hispanic mothers (hazard ratio [HR], 2.71; 95% CI, 2.05-3.59) and non-Hispanic black mothers (HR, 1.55; 95% CI, 1.17-2.07) stopped receiving milk earlier in the hospitalization compared with infants of non-Hispanic white mothers. Hispanic mothers had lower odds of providing skin-to-skin care at <1 month (OR, 0.61; 95% CI, 0.43-0.87) compared with non-Hispanic whites.

Conclusions: Hispanic and non-Hispanic black mothers were less likely than non-Hispanic white mothers to continue providing milk for their VLBW infants throughout the NICU stay.

Keywords: breastfeeding; preterm infant.