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

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Exclusive Breastfeeding; Co-production of Health in Communities
• Interventions: Other: Uni-directional SMS; Device: Feature phone; Other: Virtual communities; Other: Hybrid setup

• Registration Number: NCT02263118
• Lead Sponsor: Universidad Francisco Marroquín

Brief Summary

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.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2013-11
• Primary Completion: 2014-05
• Study Completion: 2014-05
• Study First Submitted: 2014-10-02
• Study First Submitted QC: 2014-10-07
• Study First Posted: 2014-10-13
• Results First Submitted: 2015-05-31
• Status Verified: 2015-06
• Results First Submitted QC: 2015-06-26
• Last Update Submitted: 2015-06-29
• Results First Posted: 2015-06-30
• Last Update Posted: 2015-07-22

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: Female
• Target Recruitment: 100

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

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Hybrid setup	Uni-directional SMS	Participants were made part of virtual communities in which they could exchange about infant's health as groups, via SMS. Additionally, a health professional was included in the virtual community.
Virtual communities	Virtual communities	Participants were made part of virtual communities in which could exchange about infant's health as groups, via SMS, following the SHM Foundation's (http://www.shmfoundation.org/) m-health methodology.
Hybrid setup	Virtual communities	Participants were made part of virtual communities in which they could exchange about infant's health as groups, via SMS. Additionally, a health professional was included in the virtual community.
Virtual communities	Uni-directional SMS	Participants were made part of virtual communities in which could exchange about infant's health as groups, via SMS, following the SHM Foundation's (http://www.shmfoundation.org/) m-health methodology.
Hybrid setup	Hybrid setup	Participants were made part of virtual communities in which they could exchange about infant's health as groups, via SMS. Additionally, a health professional was included in the virtual community.
Uni-directional SMS	Uni-directional SMS	Participants in this group received breastfeeding promoting messages based on the MAMA (http://www.mobilemamaalliance.org/) breastfeeding database. Individuals could only receive text messages.
Hybrid setup	Feature phone	Participants were made part of virtual communities in which they could exchange about infant's health as groups, via SMS. Additionally, a health professional was included in the virtual community.
Control group	Feature phone	Individuals were given a feature phone (simple mobile phone)
Uni-directional SMS	Feature phone	Participants in this group received breastfeeding promoting messages based on the MAMA (http://www.mobilemamaalliance.org/) breastfeeding database. Individuals could only receive text messages.
Virtual communities	Feature phone	Participants were made part of virtual communities in which could exchange about infant's health as groups, via SMS, following the SHM Foundation's (http://www.shmfoundation.org/) m-health methodology.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Number of Participants With Changes in Knowledge	December 2013 - May 2014, 23 weeks	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).

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Qualitative Nature of Health-related Text-messages	December 2013 - May 2014, 23 weeks	Specifically, we were interested in classifying individual text-messages as social support or health related.
Number of Text-messages Exchanged in Virtual Communities	December 2013 - May 2014, 23 weeks	We were interested in the activity of virtual communities in terms of sent text-messages.
Mean Change in Weight-for-Age Z-score	Baseline at December 2013 and 23 weeks later in May 2014	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.