BBF Index

The Becoming Breastfeeding Friendly Index (BBFI) was developed to guide countries in assessing their readiness to scale up breastfeeding protection, promotion and support. The evidence-informed BBFI was developed between August 2015 and January 2016 by Yale University in collaboration with a Technical Advisory Group of breastfeeding experts working in Canada, the United Kingdom, Latin America, West Africa, South and South East Asia and for international organizations located in Geneva, Switzerland, Washington DC, and New York.

The BBFI assesses the 8 GEARS of the Breastfeeding Gear Model (i.e. advocacy; political will; legislation & policy; funding & resources; training & program delivery; promotion; research & evaluation; coordination, goals & monitoring) using 54 corresponding BENCHMARKS. Each gear has a different number of benchmarks that assess the strength of that gear within the breastfeeding friendly environment. The BBFI describes each benchmark, the possible sources that can be used to gather data to score each benchmark, and a description of how to score each benchmark. Within each gear, real world examples are provided to also help guide the scoring of the benchmarks.

Once benchmark scores have been generated for all benchmarks, eight gear SCORES plus one total country are produced to allow countries to identify gaps within each gear and then address those gaps through recommendations. Follow the scoring steps 1, 2 and 3 on this website to generate the eight gear scores plus the total country score.

• BBF's narrated PowerPoint introduction that explains the process.