Indicators for Assessing Infant and Young Child Feeding Practices

This three-part series issued by WHO summarizes new and updated indicators to assess infant and young child feeding. It provides an operational guide on measurement issues and an update on the indicator values for 54 countries using data from Demographic and Health Surveys. It is hoped that the indicators will be widely used in large-scale population-based surveys in countries to assess progress in the implementation of the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding and to measure the coverage of effective nutrition interventions in young children. The series has three parts:

1. Definitions: This report summarizes the discussion and consensus reached on 8 core indicators and 7 optional indicators for assessing infant and young child feeding practices that are population-based and can be derived from household survey data.
2. Measurement: This guide on measurement provides tools for collection and calculation of the indicators. Like the indicators, this guide is intended primarily for use by large-scale surveys; the tools provided herein should be of use to the managers of such surveys. The guide covers topics that are specific to data collection for the infant and young child feeding (IYCF) indicators, and does not cover other related survey research topics comprehensively; many other general sources of guidance are available.1
3. Country Profiles: This document gives details on indicators for assessing breastfeeding and complementary feeding that were agreed by WHO, UNICEF and partners in 2007. It presents information on infant and young child feeding practices for 46 countries.