Putting public health into print: Newspaper reports on breastfeeding, 1997-2006

Background: Breastfeeding as a preventive public health strategy has been increasingly promoted in the US public health and medical sectors over the past decade. Breastfeeding-supportive legislation has been widely implemented, major medical organizations have published emphatic statements in favor of breastfeeding, and the US government has actively promoted breastfeeding, most recently via the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign. The ultimate goals of such promotion are to increase public awareness and acceptance, and to raise breastfeeding rates. Objective: To determine whether popular coverage of breastfeeding also increased in the past decade. Methods: We analyzed data from 18 of the top 20, and 100 of the top 200 circulating US newspapers in the LexisNexis database. We recorded the number of articles available for 1997 through 2006, calculated the average number of articles per publication per year, and used linear regression to look for any significant trend. P-values were determined by linear correlation analysis using an F test. Results: The volume of articles about breastfeeding in the print media rose between 1997 and 2006. Significant increases were visible within both the top 18/20 newspapers (p= 0.0094) and 100 of the top 200 newspapers (p=0.0245). Conclusion: As public health efforts to promote breastfeeding have increased, so has popular coverage of breastfeeding. Over the same time period, breastfeeding rates increased significantly. A spike in newspaper coverage in 2005-6 could be related to the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign, which launched in June 2004.