Associations between exclusive breastfeeding duration and children’s developmental outcomes: Evidence from Siaya county, Kenya

Silas Onyango, Elizabeth Kimani-Murage, Patricia Kitsao-Wekulo, Nelson K Langat, Kenneth Okelo, Christopher Obong’o, Jürg Utzinger and Günther Fink

PLOS ONE, 2022, vol. 17, issue 3, 1-13

Abstract: Background: Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) during the first 6 months of life is widely promoted as a key strategy to enhance child health, growth, and development. Even though a high proportion of children in Kenya are currently breastfed exclusively, there is little evidence regarding the developmental benefits during the first year of life. This paper aims to fill this gap by establishing an association between EBF and early childhood developmental outcomes among children below the age of 6 months in Kenya. Methods: We used data collected as part of a cluster-randomized controlled trial conducted in Bondo sub-county in the western part of Kenya to assess the associations between EBF and development in the first year of life. The primary exposure variable was EBF, and the outcome variable was child development as measured by the Ages and Stages Questionnaire–Third Edition (ASQ-3). Results: We analyzed data from 570 children aged below 6 months at the time of the interview. Breastfeeding children exclusively between 3 and 6 months was associated with 0.61 standard deviation (SD) higher ASQ-3 scores in the adjusted model. When specific domains were considered, in the adjusted models, EBF in the 3–6 months period was associated with 0.44 SD, 0.34 SD and 0.36 SD higher ASQ-3 scores in communication, gross motor, and problem solving domains, respectively. There were weak associations in the fine motor and social-emotional domains. Conclusion: EBF in the 3- to 6-month age range has significant positive associations with child development, especially for communication, gross motor, and problem-solving. Programs encouraging mothers to continue EBF in this period may have substantial benefits for children.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0265366 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 65366&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0265366

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0265366

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().