TY  - JOUR
AU  - Coleman, Jesse
AU  - Eriksen, Jaran
AU  - Black, Vivian
AU  - Thorson, Anna
AU  - Hatcher, Abigail
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/6/29
TI  - The Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action Text Message–Based mHealth Intervention for Maternal Care in South Africa: Qualitative User Study
JO  - JMIR Hum Factors
SP  - e14078
VL  - 7
IS  - 2
KW  - maternal health
KW  - text messaging
KW  - focus groups
KW  - South Africa
KW  - mHealth
KW  - reproductive health
KW  - limited resource settings
KW  - public health
KW  - prenatal care
KW  - postnatal care
AB  - Background: Using mobile technology to support health care (mobile health [mHealth]) has been shown to improve health outcomes across a multitude of health specialties and across the world. Exploring mHealth user experiences can aid in understanding how and why an intervention was successful. The Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA) was a free maternal mHealth SMS text messaging service that was offered to pregnant women in Johannesburg, South Africa, with the goal of improving maternal, fetal, and infant health outcomes. We conducted focus group discussions with MAMA users to learn about their experiences with the program. Objective: The aim of this qualitative study was to gather opinions of participants of the MAMA maternal mHealth service regarding health care atmosphere, intervention use, and intervention feedback. Methods: Prenatal and postnatal women (N=15) from public antenatal and postnatal care sites in central Johannesburg who were receiving free maternal health text messages (MAMA) participated in 3 focus group discussions. Predefined discussion topics included personal background, health care system experiences, MAMA program recruitment, acceptability, participant experiences, and feedback. Results: The feedback regarding experiences with the health system were comprised of a few reports of positive experiences and many more reports of negative experiences such as long wait times, understaffed facilities, and poor service. Overall acceptability for the maternal text message intervention was high. Participants reflected that the messages were timely, written clearly, and felt supportive. Participants also reported sharing messages with friends and family. Conclusions: These findings suggest that maternal mHealth interventions delivered through text messages can provide timely, relevant, useful, and supportive information to pregnant women and new mothers especially in settings where there may be mistrust of the health care system. 
SN  - 2292-9495
UR  - http://humanfactors.jmir.org/2020/2/e14078/
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2196/14078
UR  - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32459628
DO  - 10.2196/14078
ID  - info:doi/10.2196/14078
ER  -