Abstract
Stay Home, Stay Connected: Providing a Virtual Model for Sustainable Educational and Psychosocial Support in Pregnancy
APHA 2022 Annual Meeting and Expo
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic emphasized the need for flexible, remote, anticipatory guidance and psychosocial support for pregnant people. To address this need, we created a virtual prenatal support program, Stay Home, Stay Connected (SHSC), in March 2020. SHSC consists of monthly small-group sessions which connect pregnant people at similar gestational ages with an obstetric provider (e.g., physicians, midwives). Groups are facilitated by medical, midwifery, and social work students. We conducted an evaluation of the patient experience with SHSC to inform future program development.
Methods: SHSC leaders designed a brief eight-question survey assessing participants’ experience with the program using Likert-scale responses. Surveys were distributed by email following small group sessions. Survey responses were analyzed using basic descriptive statistics using Excel, and qualitative responses were thematically coded.
Results: To date, over 300 pregnant patients have participated in the program. In total, 50 survey responses were available. 62% of participants would recommend SHSC to other pregnant patients, 51% found the small group helpful for learning about pregnancy and postpartum, and 53% reported that the small group helped them to feel supported in their pregnancy. Qualitative coding highlighted the key reasons patients joined SHSC were for a sense of community and more robust pregnancy education.
Conclusion: Our data demonstrate that SHSC fulfills a sense of community for participants in addition to providing reliable education. As obstetric care shifts towards the use of virtual platforms to overcome existing barriers to quality prenatal care, psychosocial support for patients becomes paramount.