A Mobile-health Pilot Experiment Targeting Mothers With Newborns in Rural Areas of San Juan Sacatepequez, Guatemala

Universidad Francisco Marroquín100 enrolled

Overview

The purpose of this study was to determine whether exposure to m-health platforms promoting recommended breastfeeding practices was effective in transmitting the exclusive breastfeeding message to participant mothers, and in improving weight evolution of infants.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

DOUBLE

Enrollment

100

Conditions

Exclusive Breastfeeding Co-production of Health in Communities

Interventions

Uni-directional SMSOTHER

Exposure to breastfeeding promoting SMSs

Feature phoneDEVICE

Participants were given a feature phone.

Virtual communitiesOTHER

Exposure to virtual community communication via SMS

Eligibility

Sex: FEMALEHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * Can read * Has a baby of less than 4 months of age OR is in her 8th month of pregnancy Exclusion Criteria: * Cannot read * Does not have a newborn

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Number of Participants With Changes in Knowledge

Specifically, we were interested in: the number of participants who switched from an incorrect to a correct knowledge regarding exclusive breastfeeding during the experiment (learned the message); the number of participants who had a correct knowledge but switched to an incorrect one during the experiment (forgot the message); the number of participants who had an incorrect knowledge and kept it until the end of the experiment (continued to be unaware); the number of participants who had a correct knowledge and kept it until the end of the experiment (remembered the message).

Time frame: December 2013 - May 2014, 23 weeks

Secondary Outcomes

Qualitative Nature of Health-related Text-messages

Specifically, we were interested in classifying individual text-messages as social support or health related.

Time frame: December 2013 - May 2014, 23 weeks

Number of Text-messages Exchanged in Virtual Communities

We were interested in the activity of virtual communities in terms of sent text-messages.

Time frame: December 2013 - May 2014, 23 weeks

Mean Change in Weight-for-Age Z-score

We used the World Health Organization Anthro software (http://www.who.int/childgrowth/software/en/) to calculate z-scores for the weight-for-age anthropometric indicator of participants' infants at the beginning and at the end of the project. The software is based on the WHO Child Growth Standards and allowed to compare measurements of infants to the normal growth standards. The Z-score indicates the number of standard deviations away from the mean. The indicator is particularly useful to detect abnormal growth patterns in infants' development. For instance, an infant whose weight falls in the -2 z-score for the weight-for-age anthropometric indicator is underweight. Below -3, the child is severely underweight. Similarly, a child whose weight-for-age is above a +1 z-score may have a growth problem. We report the mean change of the z-scores for the weight-for-age anthropomorphic indicator of participants' babies.

Data from ClinicalTrials.gov

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