AbstractsMedical & Health Science

Abstract

Introduction. The child health is one of the most important indicators of population health and the development of society. The health of children in China has improved in the past decades. The child health care system has been established and improved. The child health care service is one of the most important ways to improve child health and protect child from illness and growth failure. Infant feeding consultation, especially advice on breastfeeding practices, is one of the major parts of child health care services. The ongoing health system reform in China provides opportunity for the further development of child health care services. Besides hospital outpatient clinics, infants can receive child health care from community health centres with the development of more community health services in China. The aims of this study are to determine infant feeding practices in the city of Chengdu in Sichuan Province and the factors associated with breastfeeding practices, and explore the differences of child health care outcomes, including breastfeeding rates and health outcomes, of infants receiving their health care at a hospital or a community health centre. The maternal perceptions of quality of the child health care services provided will also be assessed. Method. A cohort study of 845 mothers and infants (417 in the hospital group and 428 in the community health group) who received continuing child health care from hospital or community health centre, was undertaken to explore the infant feeding practices in Chengdu and associated factors between April 2010 and January 2012. Mothers were interviewed face to face within 15 days after their infants" birth and followed up through phone interviews at one, three and six months using structured questionnaires. A client perception study was undertaken at six and half months postpartum to study the quality of the continuing child health care services provided by the hospital outpatient clinic and child health care section of community health centre. Descriptive and univariate analysis were used to describe the socio-demographic characteristics of the observations and facilities, the breastfeeding related variables and the prevalence of breastfeeding at one, three and six months between community health centre and hospital groups. Logistic regression analyses were used to examine the factors associated with infant feeding practices. Survival analysis was performed to describe the duration of breastfeeding and the factors associated with the breastfeeding duration. The factors relating to health outcomes including infants‟ growth and illnesses were analysed using ANOVA, Chi-square test, and a logistic regression model. The clients perceptions of the child health care from community health centres and hospitals were assessed by descriptive and univariate analyses. All analyses were undertaken using PASW Statistics version 18.0. Results In this study, 93% of mothers initiated any breastfeeding within 15 days postpartum. The any breastfeeding rate was 88.0%,…