Methodology of infant and young child feeding index for children aged 6-24 months in China

Objective: To establish a infant and young child feeding index (ICFI) in China to comprehensive evaluate the feeding of children aged 6-24 months.

Methods: Based on the feed index concept defined by Ruel and Menon in 2002, and according to the feeding principle by WHO and Chinese dietary guidelines for children aged 0-6 years, the feed index for infants and young children was built and the variables were scored. Then using WAZ, HAZ and WHZ, the correlation between ICFI and Z score for children in urban and rural of three provinces (Sichuan, Hebei and Heilongjiang) was evaluated.

Results: The ICFI was constituted by 7 parts: continued breast-eeding, bottle-feeding, dietary diversity for the past 24 h, frequency of feeding solids/semisolids for the past 24 h, food frequency for the past 7d, the supplementary time of the formula milk and other foods. The difference of ICFI score between urban and rural group was significant (P < 0.05). In urban, the ICFI score of children aged 6-8 months was lower than that of children aged 9-24 months. In urban, the negatively correlation between ICFI and WAZ WHZ was significant (P < 0.05). In rural, the negatively correlation between ICFI and WHZ was significant (P < 0.05), while the positively correlation between ICFI and HAZ was significant (P < 0.05).

Conclusions: ICFI is effective to evaluate the infant feeding in China.