Equity, acceptability and feasibility of interventions to manage difficulties with breastfeeding for infants under six months with growth faltering: a qualitative evidence synthesis

Review objectives What are the perspectives of stakeholders on equity, acceptability and feasibility of interventions with a focus on restoring or improving the volume and quality of breastmilk and breastfeeding when breastfeeding practices are sub-optimal or prematurely stopped for infants <6 months with growth faltering? Searches We will conduct comprehensive searches on the following electronic databases for potential studies: CINAHL Complete (EBSCO), MEDLINE (EBSCO), EMBASE (Ovid), APA PsycINFO (EBSCO), Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) and Scopus(Ovid). We will limit the search to peer-reviewed published qualitative or mixed-methods (where the qualitative element of the study is included in the findings) studies published in the English language between January 2000 – June 2022. Additionally, we will review the reference lists of relevant systematic reviews and will conduct a search on Google Scholar. An English language restriction and a methodological filter for type of study will be included in the search strategy. Study design We will include primary studies that used qualitative study designs such as ethnography, phenomenology, case studies, grounded theory studies and qualitative process evaluations. We will include studies that used both qualitative methods for data collection (e.g. focus group discussions, individual interviews, observation, diaries, document analysis, and open-ended survey questions) and data analysis (e.g. thematic analysis, framework analysis, grounded theory). We will include mixed methods studies where it is possible to extract the qualitative data that were collected and analysed. We will exclude studies that collected data using qualitative methods but did not undertake qualitative analysis (e.g. open-ended survey questions where the response data are analysed using descriptive statistics only). We will exclude studies that did not report an intervention to manage difficulties with breast feeding. We will exclude studies reporting quantitative data only, and grey literature, discussion articles, conference abstracts.