Human milk banking services: An umbrella review protocol

Objective To review the current state of the art of human milk banking including evidence on development and implementation of human milk banking services in middle- and high-income countries; models of delivery; and the roles of key stakeholders in supporting and sustaining human milk banking services. Introduction Donor Human Milk (DHM) is human milk in excess of an infant's current and future needs that is donated for use by another infant. The World Health Organisation recommends that it should be available to all preterm and low birthweight infants. Human Milk Banks (HMB) require operational sustainability to ensure all year-round consistency and equity of DHM supply. This review will inform the co-design of an evidence framework for a national human milk banking resource network. Inclusion criteria Systematic reviews of studies reporting on the development, implementation and sustainability of a milk banking service in middle- and high-income counties. Methods The guidelines for umbrella reviews from the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis will be followed. A key word search strategy will be used to search: CINAHL (EBSCO), MEDLINE (EBSCO), PsycINFO (EBSCO), Embase (Ovid), JBI Evidence Synthesis, Epistemonikos, and the PROSPERO register. A grey literature search will be undertaken on Google scholar, BASE and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) website. English language and date restrictions (2000-current) will be used. Titles and abstracts and full-text articles will be independently screened by two reviewers. The reference lists of the included studies will be searched. Studies will be screened in Covidence by two independent reviewers. All reviewers will agree on the included studies. Data will be extracted and presented graphically using figures and tables. Narrative summary text will accompany the tables and figures. This protocol has been registered on PROSPERO