A key motivating factor in the infant health and welfare movement was health. Before the infant welfare movement 74 babies in every 1000 were dying, mostly from poor health, this showed that there was a lack of knowledge surrounding infant welfare and health. Therefore this movement was focused specifically on improving the healthcare available to infants and improving the knowledge surrounding infant healthcare and welfare. This included improving knowledge around feeding methods and the basic needs of infants to thrive. Truby King made huge efforts during this movement, he undertook vigorous research into the needs of infants and set up organizations such as Plunket in 1907 and the Kraitane Hospital that was open in 1927.
An important leader of the Infant welfare movement was Truby King. Leadership was required for this movement as without strong leadership and new ideas Infant welfare would have remained in a dire state. Truby King recognized that Infant welfare really needed to be drastically improved and therefore began researching into Infant Welfare and what improvement could be made. He found out the 12 essential that babies need which included research into feeding methods, which he discovered to be one of the biggest factors of