The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) promotes and supports breastfeeding as an important part of the nutrition service benefits that the WIC program provides to meet its mission of safeguarding the health of low-income women, infants and children. These reports are a compilation of fiscal year breastfeeding performance measurements, based on program participation data of the number of partially and fully breastfed infants for each WIC state and local agency.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, PL 111- 296, requires the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to annually compile and publish breastfeeding performance measurements. The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service uses this data to monitor breastfeeding trends and to help identify exemplary performance of WIC state and local agencies in breastfeeding and make awards to such agencies, e.g., WIC Breastfeeding Performance Bonus Awards.