Breastfeeding Data

The New Mexico Breastfeeding Task Force is very interested in publicizing and, when possible, gathering statistics relevant to breastfeeding, especially in our state. Unfortunately for many years, the major source for national breastfeeding statistics has been Ross Laboratories. The last Ross Survey was published in 2002, and showed that breastfeeding initiation and continuation to 6 months of age on a national basis were 69.5% and 32.5% respectively.

Recently other sources have become available. The New Mexico Pregnancy Risk
Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) is an ongoing invaluable project of the
New Mexico Department of Health with support from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC).   PRAMS is a multi-year, population-based survey used to
identify and monitor selected maternal behaviors and experiences occurring before,
during and after pregnancy. It includes state-wide breastfeeding statistics.   For the
complete report, which has a plethora of invaluable maternal/infant data please visit
the New Mexico State Health Department PRAM site.

We were gratified to discover from PRAMS that, as of 1999, New Mexico has
surpassed the Healthy People 2010 goal of 75% initiation of breastfeeding.   PRAMS
does not have data, either for six months or for one year, where the goals are 50%
and 25% respectively. However, such data has been collected by the CDC in its
National Immunization Survey. New Mexico in 2004 had an 80.7% initiation rate.
At six months we had fallen to 41.2% and at one year to 21.1%. Recall that the Health
People 2010 goals for 6 months and one year are 50% and 25% respectively.
Please look at the CDC state by state comparison report card.

The Task Force hopes that its work will continue to result in improvement of these statistics.