26 Jul Mobile Message Delivery Can Help Parents Learn Safe Infant Sleep Practices
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Moon
Rachel Y. Moon, M.D.
Division Head, General Pediatrics
Professor of Pediatrics
University of Virginia School of Medicine
Charlottesville, VA 22908
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Approximately 3500 babies die suddenly and unexpectedly during sleep in the US every year. Even though there are safe sleep recommendations, many parents do not follow them because of misinformation or misconceptions.
Therefore we tested 2 complementary interventions to promote infant safe sleep practices. The first was a nursing quality improvement intervention aimed at ensuring that mothers would hear key messages and that there was appropriate role modeling of safe sleep practices by hospital personnel.
The second was a mobile health intervention, in which mothers received videos and text messages or emails with safe sleep information during the baby’s first two months of life. We randomized mothers to receive either the safe sleep interventions or breast-feeding interventions (the control interventions). Mothers who received the mobile health intervention reported statistically significantly higher rates of placing their babies on their back, room sharing without bed sharing, no soft bedding use, and pacifier use, compared with mothers who received a control intervention. Although the nursing quality improvement intervention did not influence infant safe sleep practices, there was an interaction such that mothers who received both the safe sleep nursing quality improvement intervention and the safe sleep mobile health intervention had the highest rates of placing their babies on the back.
MedicalResearch.com: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?
Response: The mobile health program offered a way to provide messages during periods when parents may be having difficulty following the recommendations, and using this technology to provide information and support at critical times may be helpful.
MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?
Response: We are hoping to expand the study to larger groups and to groups that are at high risk, so that we may better understand what types of messages work the best, and what the best timing is for these messages.
Disclosures: The study was funded by grants from NICHD and the CJ Foundation for SIDS.
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Last Updated on July 26, 2017 by Marie Benz MD FAAD