Supporting breastfeeding for women with low education levels, psychosocial problems, and/or socioeconomic constraints: a scoping review protocol

OBJECTIVE: This scoping review aims to identify and map interventions and/or strategies used to support the initiation and continuation of breastfeeding for women at risk of delaying initiation, early cessation, or not breastfeeding due to low levels of education, psychosocial problems, and/or socioeconomic challenges in high-income countries.

INTRODUCTION: While breastfeeding has lifelong beneficial health effects for women and infants, there is a risk of delaying initiation, early cessation, or not initiating breastfeeding at all due to factors related to health inequalities, such as low levels of education, psychosocial problems, and/or socioeconomic constraints.

INCLUSION CRITERIA: This review will include eligible quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods studies, as well as systematic reviews and gray literature. We will include studies conducted in high-income countries, focusing on interventions and/or strategies to support women with low levels of education, psychosocial problems, and/or socioeconomic constraints in the initiation and continuation of breastfeeding for up to 6 months postpartum.

METHODS: This review will follow the JBI methodology for scoping reviews, using the Participants, Concept, and Context framework. The primary search will be performed in MEDLINE (Ovid), PsycINFO (EBSCOhost), Embase (Ovid), and CINAHL (EBSCOhost). We will include publications in English, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, German, Bulgarian, Arabic, and Spanish, published from 1991 until the present. A data charting form will be developed and used for all the included articles.

REVIEW REGISTRATION: Open Science Framework https://osf.io/tmp4v/.