COVID-19, Breastfeeding, Infant Feeding, and Breast Milk Repository

We created a specific file on scientific publications related to breastfeeding, infant feeding, and breast milk; it is a subset of our full repository “COVID-19, Child and Maternal Health, Nutrition.” The same papers in this specialized repository can also be found in the comprehensive repository.

Four electronic databases (PubMed, EMBASE, Global Health(OVID), and SCOPUS) are daily searched for peer-reviewed English articles. The search terms comprise keywords for COVID-19 and one or more of the following dimensions: reproductive health, maternal health, newborn health, child health, food security, maternal nutrition, child nutrition, breastfeeding, and lactation. We identified keywords based on relevant literature and subject headings for each database. Additionally, hand-search of articles and a snowball search strategy are used as supplementary methods to capture articles missed during the systematic search process.

For the specific repository on COVID-19 and Breastfeeding, Infant Feeding and Breast Milk we use additional keywords, such as milk, feeding, breast, formula. For more details regarding the specific search terms and strategy, please email Marwa Ramadan: mmahmou9@jhu.edu 

Some sections of the abstracts are restated verbatim from their original publications; other sections have been paraphrased and modified to highlight themes related to maternal and child health and nutrition in the context of COVID-19. There is a wide range of writing quality among rapidly released publications, so we have interpreted texts to the best of our ability.

We note significant contributions of new publications to the existing body of literature on aforementioned topics, as well as gaps in areas of study that remain to be investigated.

Absolutely. If you want to use the publications that are described, you will need to refer to the authors and journals directly. If you use our full overviews, then it would be correct to reference this initiative and refer to the website with the following citation:

COVID-19, Maternal and Child Health, and Nutrition – Scientific repository, 2020-2021. Center for Humanitarian Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Centre for Humanitarian Health, Johns Hopkins University, USA. http://hopkinshumanitarianhealth.org/empower/advocacy/covid19/covid-19-children-and-nutrition/

If certain important publications are missing, that might be an unintentional oversight on our part. If you notice any errors or think that we should include a specific publication, please send your suggestions to mververs@jhu.edu (subject line: REPOSITORY COVID-19).

Note: Publications will be marked as retracted in our repository, if they were withdrawn since publication according to the following site: https://retractionwatch.com/retracted-coronavirus-covid19-papers/ 

This project is supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). However, most of the work for this repository is volunteer work by students.

Our team consisted of a group of great students, all affiliated with Johns Hopkins University (JHU): Minyoung Jang, Megan E. Hadley, and Sajya Singh are medical students at JHU School of Medicine; Xiaodi Xu, Jingyi Wu, Natasha Kaushal, Theresa Boyer, Maisie Conrad, and Caitlin Salloum are Master of Science in Public Health students at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Alexandra Norton is both a medical and MPH student affiliated with both schools; Natalie Busath, Jessie Kunz-Renneberg, Sheila Roy, Mary Caroline Rhodes, Lytitia Shea, Joeeta Chowdhury, Avantika Varma, Jeslyn Tengkawan, Erin Adams, Angie Johnson, and Alisa Sano are Master of Public Health students at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Jayati Sharma is a Master of Science student in Epidemiology and Gayathri Menon and Stacie Loisate are Master of Health Science students in Epidemiology; Akansh Hans is Master of Bioethics student; Tayler Sulse and Melissa Chao are Master of Health Science students and Valerie Harrington is a Master of Science student in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Mina Dang is a Master of Health Science in Health Economics and Outcomes Research Student at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Yama Daqiq and Daniela Estrada are a Master of Applied Science students in Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety, Kimberly Spray is a Master of Applied Science student in Humanitarian Health, and Noah Dietsche is a Master of Applied Science student in Global Health Planning and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Andrea Kasowitz is earning a Certificate in Adolescent Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Marwa Ramadan is a doctoral student in International Health, Emily Bryce is a doctoral student in Global Disease Epidemiology and Control, and Gloria Marino is a doctoral student in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health 

The project is coordinated and supervised by Mija Ververs, who works at the Center for Humanitarian Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is a visiting health scientist with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.