Rebecca's account of what the PROBIT study looked at has always been 
my understanding as well.

It was a highly creative way of avoiding the inevitable weaknesses of 
any study looking at different outcomes of infant feeding - let's 
make the single differentiating factor the setting in which the 
mothers gave birth, and we'll make a massively powered study (there 
were how many 1000s in it?) so we can really trust the results.

>
>The two groups are all the same in terms of education, socioeconomic
>status, race/ethnicity, presence of misinformed grandmothers at home,
>etc etc etc.  The *only* difference between the two groups is exposure
>or lack of exposure to institutional delivery of
>breastfeeding-supportive care and information.


Absolutely. *This* is what they measured - Chernobyl and the grannies 
are irrelevant in terms of the study, unless you can show that the 
Baby friendly hospital babies had more/fewer misinformed grannies for 
some reason, or lived closer/further away to the effects of the 
disaster, and if it was properly randomised this would not be the 
case.

Actually, misinformed grannies can be a measurable factor in bf. One 
study here (which  I can't put my hands on) showed the more often a 
mother saw her own mother,  the less likely she was to breastfeed. 
But here again, this was at least partly just a proxy for social 
class - working class mothers live closr to their own mothers, and 
working class mothers are less likely to bf.  If the PROBIT study 
randomised properly so there were no socio-economic differences 
between the two cohorts then there would be the same number of 
grannies in each, seeing their daughters with the same frequency.

Heather Welford Nei
NCT bfc, tutor, UK
-- 
http://www.heatherwelford.co.uk

http://heatherwelford.posterous.com

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