Annual Meeting Recordings are now available for purchase
310599
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
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Anna Hassan, MPH
,
Department of Global Environmental Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Tom Evans, AA
,
Educational Message Services, Ventura, CA
Jonathan Holly, BA
,
Educational Message Services, Ventura, CA
Patricia Davis, BS
,
Department of Global Environmental Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Christine Dennis, BSN
,
Department of Global Environmental Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Onita Harris, MLA
,
Department of Global Environmental Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Starleen Maharaj, BA
,
Department of Global Environmental Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Kimisha Sawyers, BS
,
Department of Global Environmental Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Courtney Schultheis, BS
,
Department of Global Environmental Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Maureen Y. Lichtveld, MD, MPH
,
Department of Global Environmental Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
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 post-partum, 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
Learning Objectives:
Describe how both community health workers and program participants drive the community-based participatory research.
Demonstrate community engagement of first-time, WIC-eligible mothers in the Louisiana Gulf Coast.
Identify successes in using mobile health technology with both one-way and two-way text messaging capacity.
Demonstrate importance of region-specific and culturally-competent health education, especially in vulnerable populations.
Keyword(s): Community-Based Research (CBPR), Health Promotion and Education
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the Program Manager and work closely with our trained community health workers who engage participants and administer all data collection. I attained my degree in Epidemiology and have extensive data management and data analysis experience. I have worked as Health Education Outreach Coordinator at a Title X FQHC. I worked closely with text portal software professionals to create unique and robust mobile technology portal utilizing feedback from both community health workers and participants.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines,
and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed
in my presentation.
