TY - JOUR T1 - Legislation on marketing of breast-milk substitutes in digital and social media: a scoping review JF - BMJ Global Health JO - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2022-011150 VL - 8 IS - 3 SP - e011150 AU - Bianca Franco-Lares AU - Vania Lara-Mejía AU - Ana Lilia Lozada-Tequeanes AU - Cassandra Villanueva-Vázquez AU - Sonia Hernandez-Cordero Y1 - 2023/03/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/8/3/e011150.abstract N2 - Innovative and continuously changing methods of digital marketing are routinely used to reach young women and their families with advertisements that normalise infant artificial feeding and undermine breastfeeding. Legislation and provisions regulating digital and social media marketing are limited across countries. The aim of this scoping review was to systematically identify and summarise worldwide legislation implemented to regulate breast-milk substitutes (BMS) marketing on digital and social media, as well as identifying areas of opportunity to strengthen and improve it. Documents published from January 2012 to April 2022 were examined using search strategies including multiple databases and citation tracking. A total of 127 sources were evaluated, and only 28 documents from 24 countries meeting the inclusion criteria were retained. Most of the reviewed documents explicitly stated that digital marketing was prohibited (n=23), as opposed to being regulated only, with prior approval from the relevant authorities in each country. Regarding monitoring, from the countries included in this scoping review, only 14 of 24 (58.3%) stipulate a monitoring process for compliance with legal measures and have designated an actor responsible for monitoring. In addition, 22 of 24 (91.6%) countries included have defined sanctions, but only 17 (70%) countries specify the entity responsible for enforcement. The results highlight the urgent call for the explicit regulation of BMS marketing in digital and social media worldwide, as well as the public documentation of such legal measures. Likewise, it is important that there are effective, transparent and free of commercial influence national monitoring systems used to ensure compliance with legal measures.Data are available upon reasonable request. Data are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author. ER -