Barriers to Breastfeeding was a focused ethnographic study of first time mothers in a rural coastal community in Kilifi County, Kenya.
The data are being used to raise awareness of the lack of breastfeeding support for mothers, at a local level in Kenya.
sankalpa funded the research costs of a two year study, focusing on the drivers and barriers experienced by mothers, to breastfeed exclusively.
sankalpa has enabled an in-depth investigation of the contextual factors which will need to be considered in any local interventions to prevent malnutrition and child deaths.
It is hard to find funding for this kind of research from major donors who are more interested in large scale projects.
Alison Talbert, paediatrician