Official Title:

Neonatal Feeding Practices, Lactation Support, and Infant Outcomes: A Needs Assessment to Elucidate Facilitators of, Gaps in, and Opportunities for Improving Neonatal Lactation Outcomes for Vulnerable Infants in Ghana

Most babies born too early (preterm infants) require some amount of time in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) or special care baby unit (SCBU) to survive. This is because infants born preterm (<37 weeks’ gestational age) miss out on essential nutrients they would usually get in the womb. These nutrients help them grow, stay healthy, and develop their brains. Therefore, determining how to best to deliver nutrients to preterm infants is important in the NICU/SCBU.

Although we believe that interventions to improve feeding in this population would be beneficial, data on the adequacy of current NICU/SCBU feeding practices and their relationship to infant outcomes are needed before nutritional improvements can be investigated.

Our main goal is to understand how babies are fed in NICU/SCBU in Ghana to help us identify areas requiring improvement. We also want to see if it’s possible to safely send breast milk samples from Tamale, Ghana to New Haven, USA for testing the nutrients in the milk.

Infants born less than 37 weeks’ gestational age are eligible for this study. We will have one-time interviews with mothers and health providers to understand current feeding and milk handling practices in the NICU. Mothers will also complete surveys to provide the research team with important health and socioeconomic information. We will collect some milk samples from mothers to analyze the nutrient content of their milk.