Gabby Implementation: Parent Protocol

Overview

The Gabby Preconception Care program is an innovative communication system designed to identify and mitigate or resolve health risks for young Black and African American (AA) women before pregnancy, as a means of reducing racial health disparities in birth outcomes. The system uses embodied conversational agent technology the investigators call "Gabby," who empathically interacts with users to assess health risks and delivers interventions to resolve or mitigate these risks. This research team has been working on the "Gabby" Preconception Care program, which features Virtual Patient Advocate (VPA) technology, for over seven years and the system is now ready for dissemination beyond the research environment and into the clinical and community context. The purpose of this project is to examine the implementation and dissemination process of the evidence-based Gabby Program. Caseworkers at Healthy Start (HS) Programs and healthcare providers at Community Health Centers (CHC's) do not have time to assess for the over 100 preconception health risks that can impact birth outcomes; our system can assist by streamlining that assessment to create a personalized list of risks.Gabby will be introduced/released to sites as part of their standard of care where patients and clients can then share their list with healthcare providers and case workers/managers to make their in-person interactions much more effective. Studies by the research team have shown that Gabby reduces health risks by 25 percent among young Black and AA women. The investigators will evaluate the success of the implementation process through both quantitative and qualitative measures including key informant telephone interviews and guidance from a Gabby Toolkit Advisory Board in order to prepare an implementation toolkit that can be used to facilitate broader dissemination. The Gabby program will not be evaluated as a research intervention, as this has been done previously, instead, how well the Gabby program worked within each site will be assessed.

The investigators' implementation approach includes: 1) engaging 6 Healthy Starts and 4 CHCs and assessing the workflow and readiness of these clinical sites; 2) implementing the Gabby program for a period of 3-6 months at each of these clinical sites; 3) assembling a preliminary, revised, and final implementation toolkit; and 4) broadly disseminating the toolkit and results of the implementation. Input from a Gabby Toolkit Advisory Board will guide implementation efforts and toolkit development to be used for wider dissemination into other clinical based sites. Data sources will include qualitative and quantitative methods, such as surveys/ assessments, key informant interviews, system-generated data, learning communities, and implementation logs. Evaluation will focus on site recruitment, training, and engagement; client engagement; clinical risk reduction; toolkit, technical assistance, and support resources; and dissemination efforts.