PreventionPays Text will be presented at APHA 2014. Our system was selected over several other text message products and we are very happy that our capacity met the rigorous needs of this research project.
This project clearly demonstrates just how critical this communication can be. There are parts of the Gulf (post oil spill and Katrina) that are similar to a third world country; communication infrastructure is almost non-existent. PreventionPays Text enables their staff and research team to reach low income moms and their families with critical and, in some cases, life-saving information.
We are very pleased to be working with such great researchers, responders, agencies, universities, and policy advocates! The work completed under IRB at Tulane University was selected by APHA (American Public Health Association) to be presented at their national conference on public health innovation. It's an honor to be a part of this amazing work. A big thanks to Anna Hassan, program director and author of the abstract, as well as the entire research team at Department of Global Environmental Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA.
Project Title: Methods and Successes in Health Promotion for Low-income, First-time Mothers in the Louisiana Gulf Coast: Community Health Workers Add the Human Element in Maternal Child Health Mobile Technology
ABSTRACT:
Technology has an ever-evolving role in maternal child health, particularly in disaster-prone and low-resource settings such as the Louisiana Gulf Coast. The Transdisciplinary Research Consortium for Gulf Resilience on Women’s Health (GROWH) supported a community-based participatory research project to strengthen resilience and improve birth outcomes. The program recruited WIC-eligible, first-time pregnant women living in vulnerable Gulf Coast areas. The innovative two-fold intervention equipped frontline community health workers (CHWs) with mobile technology uniquely designed for public health. The hybrid text messaging portal combined both efficient one-way educational message tracks, as well as two-way individualized conversational texting capacity in real-time. Bi-directional texting infused a human element into the project, enabling constructive and meaningful information exchange. Throughout each woman’s pregnancy and postpartum, CHWs conducted psychosocial assessments, utilizing mobile technology to collect data and interact with participants. The CHWs, in collaboration with WIC Clinics, created a message library tailored to high-risk Gulf Coast mothers for each trimester. Topics included breastfeeding, proper nutrition, stress-reduction and effects of controlled substances. This novel approach empowered CHWs and created messages that were both culturally-competent and region-specific, including a disaster-preparedness message series dispatched throughout hurricane season. In six months, the portal enrolled 200 participants; predominately African American (67%), annual family income <$20,000 (77.9%), 18-29 years old (98%), never married (56%) and enrolled in Medicaid (62%). Thousands of outgoing group and individualized messages were sent and kept 75% of participants actively engaged and responsive. Preliminary analyses showed high levels of satisfaction among enrolled participants.
Learning Areas:
Administer health education strategies, interventions and programs
Assessment of individual and community needs for health education
Communication and informatics
Environmental health sciences
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Public health or related research
“The first platform was a disaster. Then we found PreventionPays and everything started to click. We had a program!”