As the novel coronavirus began to spread in the early days of the pandemic, its effects were unprecedented. Many in the global nutrition community immediately recognized the danger of misinformation and more specifically how it could derail decades of progress on exclusive breastfeeding around the world. Experience from the HIV epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s taught us that rumors and myths about COVID-19 could result in major setbacks for national breastfeeding programs that would be difficult to reverse.

“Alarms went off for a lot of us when we first heard COVID-19 was making its way around the world,” said Peggy Koniz-Booher, senior nutrition and social and behavior change advisor at John Snow, Inc. “From the first days of the pandemic, people asked ‘What are we going to tell mommies? What messages need to get out through the health system and social networks to stay ahead of this?’”