From insight to action: challenges in implementing infant and young child feeding practices in India

Optimal infant and young child feeding (IYCF) early initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months, and appropriate complementary feeding with continued breastfeeding to 2 years and beyond is among the highest-impact, lowest-cost strategies for improving child survival, growth, and neurodevelopment in India. Despite notable gains in early initiation and exclusive breastfeeding in the past decade, complementary feeding remains weak, with persistent inequities by geography, socioeconomic status, maternal education, and social group. This review synthesizes recent evidence on IYCF practices in India, identifies implementation barriers across health systems, communities, and markets, and proposes pragmatic solutions. It integrates insights on frontline worker performance, mobile health (mHealth) and mass media, regulatory environments, social norms, urbanization, and vulnerable sub-populations such as adolescents, urban poor, tribal communities, and draw on global evidence to inform program design. It concludes that with an implementation agenda for India focused on service delivery quality, rights-based regulation and maternity protection, context-specific behaviour change, workforce strengthening, and routine measurement to accelerate progress.