Topic: Community and Workplace Support

The First 1,000 Days: Nourishing America’s Future

The problem of poor nutrition is pervasive throughout the U.S. Too many American women and young children suffer from high rates of obesity, food insecurity, unhealthy diets, and low rates of breastfeeding. In order to illuminate the challenge of malnutrition in the United States and galvanize a movement to ensure that every child has a healthy start to life, 1,000 Days – with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation – launched a first-of-its-kind report on the nutritional health of America’s mothers, babies and toddlers.

Breastfeeding Infographic

In collaboration with WHO, 1,000 Days developed this infographic—one in a series of six—to highlight actions needed to achieve the global target on breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding Policy Brief

The World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with 1,000 Days, developed a series of six policy briefs linked to each of the global nutrition targets. These policy briefs provide essential guidance to policymakers regarding actions needed in order to achieve progress toward improving maternal and child nutrition and achieving the global nutrition targets by 2025.

Exclusive breastfeeding—defined as the practice of only giving an infant breast-milk for the first 6 months of life (no other food or water) —is a cornerstone of child survival and child health because it provides essential, irreplaceable nutrition for a child’s growth and development. Globally, only 38% of infants are exclusively breastfed and it is estimated that sub-optimal breastfeeding practices contributes to 800,000 deaths of children annually.

Much remains to be done to make exclusive breastfeeding the norm for infant feeding and reach the target to ensure that at least half of the world’s infants are exclusively breastfed in the first six months.