Top of page

Student/Staff Portal
Global Site Navigation

Kurongkurl Katitjin

Local Section Navigation
You are here: Main Content

Related Contents

An Early Start to Nutritional Health: Improving Breastfeeding of Western Australian Aboriginal Babies

The proportion of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal babies exclusively breastfed on discharge is 86.8% and 90.4% respectively. These proportions drop dramatically in the following six months to 11% and 27.2%, with the disparity steadily increasing. Studies conducted in the Perth metropolitan area over a decade ago showed that Aboriginal babies born in urban areas had the lowest rates of exclusive breastfeeding in the state.

The WHO has recognised the importance of exclusively breastfeeding a baby for a minimum of six months to ensure a healthy start to life. Breastfeeding has been shown to be a protective factor against asthma and allergy development, ear disease, infections, respiratory illness and gastrointestinal issues.

This study aims to improve exclusive breastfeeding rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander infants in the Perth Metropolitan area. We aim to achieve this through an Interrupted Time Series (ITS) analysis design of a Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) program intervention, designed with staff and community input. CQI is an important tool for health services to achieve strong governance, assurance and service improvement.

The study will allow us to determine the breastfeeding rates of Aboriginal babies, identify the barriers and enablers to initiating and maintaining breastfeeding and determine whether a CQI program can achieve improvements in breastfeeding rates.

Researchers

Professor Daniel McAullay
Professor Sandra Eades, Curtin University
Professor Karen Edmond, University of Western Australia
Professor Rhonda Marriott, Murdoch University

Associate Professor Natalie Strobel
Ms Jocelyn Jones, University of Western Australia
Associate Professor Joanne McKenzie, Monash University

Skip to top of page