Health Literacy and Cell Phone Usage in text4baby: What do they tell us about the design of mhealth programs? Público
Poorman, Elisabeth (2013)
Published
Abstract
Background: Text4baby provides educational text messages to pregnant and postpartum women that are aimed primarily at low health literacy populations.
Objective: To examine the health behaviors and cell phone usage patterns of a text4baby target population and the associations with health literacy.
Methods: Pregnant and postpartum women were recruited from two clinics in Atlanta. Women were asked about their demographics, selected pregnancy or postpartum health behaviors, and cell phone usage patterns. Health literacy skills were measured with the Newest Vital Sign. Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine health behaviors and cell usage patterns by health literacy classification, controlling for commonly accepted confounders.
Results: Four hundred sixty-eight women were recruited, and 445 completed the Newest Vital Sign. Of these, 22% had inadequate health literacy, 50% had intermediate health literacy, and 28% had adequate health literacy skills. Lower health literacy was significantly associated with smoking, not receiving a flu shot, not consistently keeping appointments, not taking a daily vitamin during pregnancy, and not putting their infant in a car seat consistently (p<0.05). The majority of our sample received nine or more text messages a day (69.4%), one in four participants (24.6%) had changed their number within the last six months, and 7.0% shared a cell phone. Those with limited health literacy were more likely to share a cell phone than those with adequate health literacy (OR 2.57, 95% CI: 1.79, 3.69).
Conclusion: Text4baby messages should be appropriate for low health literacy levels, especially as this population has a higher prevalence of targeted unhealthy behaviors. Behaviors associated with low health literacy may require more frequent messages and supplemental information delivery. Text4baby and other mhealth programs aimed at low health literacy populations should also be aware of the different ways that these populations use their cell phones, including sharing cell phones, which may mean participants will not receive messages or have special privacy concerns; frequently changing cell phone numbers which could lead to higher drop-off rates; and the penetrance of text messages in a population that receives many messages daily.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Chapter I: Background/Literature Review.....................................................................1
Chapter II: Analysis..........................................................................................................5
Methods ..................................................................................................................5
Results ....................................................................................................................8
Chapter III: Discussion...................................................................................................11
References.........................................................................................................................16
Tables................................................................................................................................18
Appendix: Use of text messaging for maternal and infant health.....................................28
About this Master's Thesis
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Primary PDF
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Health Literacy and Cell Phone Usage in text4baby: What do they tell us about the design of mhealth programs? () | 2018-08-28 11:29:00 -0400 |
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Supplemental Files
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literature review for thesis.docx () | 2018-08-28 11:32:03 -0400 |
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