An increasing number of hospitals across the U.S. in an effort to promote breast-feeding are banning free gift bags that contain samples of infant formula, which often are given to women when they leave the hospital after delivery, the Wall Street Journal reports.
According to the Journal, critics of the gift bags say they discourage women from breast-feeding and represent an endorsement of formula-feeding by health professionals. A 2006 Government Accountability Office report found that a majority of studies it reviewed found lower breast-feeding rates among women who received the gift bags; a 1992 study in the journal Pediatrics found that women who received a breast pump in discharge bags breast-fed for longer than women who received formula; and a 1998 report in the Journal of Human Lactation found that black women receiving government food assistance who got formula samples were nearly six times less likely to breast-feed seven to 10 days after birth than other women. Legislation that would ban the gift bags has been proposed in several states -- including California, Massachusetts and Texas -- but it has have "repeatedly failed" to pass, the Journal reports. Some advocates of breast-feeding are focusing their efforts to ban the gift bags at individual hospitals rather than backing legislation, according to the Journal. Although only a small number of hospitals have banned the giveaways, Kaiser Permanente stopped distributing formula samples at its 19 facilities in 2005, and other facilities such as Brigham and Women's Hospital, Winchester Hospital and Berkshire Medical Center recently have instituted bans. New York City's 11 public hospitals last month began a program to stop offering the samples within the coming months and to implement other "breast-feeding friendly" measures, Deborah Kaplan -- assistant commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's maternal, infant and reproductive health division -- said.