Ma et al. BMC Public Health 2012, 12:568 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/12/568 R E S E A R C H A R T I C L E Open Access A summary index of infant and child feeding practices is associated with child growth in urban Shanghai Jing-Qiu Ma†, Li-Li Zhou†, Yan-Qi Hu†, Jin-Rong Liu†, Shan-Shan Liu†, Jie Zhang† and Xiao-Yang Sheng* Abstract Background: Recently, an infant and child feeding index (ICFI) constructed on brief recalls of breastfeeding, feeding frequency and food diversification was assumed to provide long-term prediction about child feeding practices. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between the cross-sectional ICFI (CS-ICFI) or longitudinal ICFI (L-ICFI) and child anthropometric indices in downtown Shanghai, China. Methods: The prospective cohort study included 180 infants aged 5-7 mo with their main caregivers who were visited 3 times every 6 months over 12 months. A CS-ICFI was constructed for each visit by using data on feeding practices based on 24-h and 7-d recalls. An L-ICFI was constructed with use of the 3 CS-ICFIs. The associations between ICFI and length-for-age z score (LAZ), weight-for-age z score (WAZ), and weight-for-length z score (WLZ) were examined. The stability of the CS-ICFI was assessed by using repeatability coefficient (RC). Results: The L-ICFI was positively associated with LAZ and WAZ at Visit 3(beta = 0.151, P = 0.040 and beta = 0.173, P = 0.024, respectively). Moreover, the CS-ICFI at Visit 1 was positively associated with LAZ, WAZ and WLZ (beta = 0.160, P = 0.029; beta = 0.191, P = 0.009; beta = 0.176, P = 0.020) at Visit 3, and the CS-ICFI at Visit 3 was also positively associated with LAZ (beta = 0.176, P = 0.016). Stability of the CS-ICFI was shown by the value of 0.14 (95% CI: 0.07, 0.31) of the RC, which differed significantly from 0 (P < 0.05). Conclusions: The ICFI constructed on brief recalls based on cross-sectional studies can be used to evaluate the effects of child feeding practice on child growth. Keywords: Child feeding practice, Brief recalls, Anthropometric indices, Repeatability coefficient Background Infant and young child feeding is of great importance for their nutrition and health. Problematic feeding practices such as inappropriate duration of breastfeeding and introduction of complementary feeding can not only lead to undernutrition, but also initiate the problem of overweight and obesity [1]. Consequently, effective feed- ing index is necessary in measuring the caregiver’s feed- ing behaviors and the infant and young child’s diet quality and quantity. * Correspondence: shengxiaoyangcn@yahoo.com.cn †Equal contributors Department of Child and Adolescent Healthcare, Xinhua Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, MOE-Shanghai Key Laboratory of Children’s Environmental Health, Shanghai 200092, China Recently, infant and child feeding practices have received increasing attention and further been assessed with the use of a summary index as shown in several studies [2-4]. This cross-sectional infant and child feed- ing index (CS-ICFI) included information on current breastfeeding and bottle feeding, feeding frequency (in the past 24 h), and 24-h or 7-d recalls of food diversi- fication. The method of combining various aspects of infant and young child feeding into an age-specific CS- ICFI provides an optimal solution for variation of recommended practices within age ranges. In addition, because the feeding practices used by caregivers at the time of study were likely to have been followed for a long time, it was assumed that the ICFI constructed by using data collected with a brief recall can provide in- formation about more lasting processes and thus, can be used to evaluate its relationship with linear growth. © 2012 Ma et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.