User assessments and the use of information from MomConnect, a mobile phone text-based information service, by pregnant women and new mothers in South Africa
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Date
2018
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BMJ Publishing Group
Abstract
MomConnect was designed to provide crucial health
information to mothers during pregnancy and in the early
years of child rearing in South Africa. The design drew on
the success of the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action’s
programme in South Africa, as well as a growing list
of mobile health (mHealth) interventions implemented
internationally. Services such as MomConnect are
dependent on user acceptability as all engagements
are voluntary, meaning that tools have to be easy to
use and useful to be successful. This paper describes
the evaluation of the tool by pregnant women and new
mothers using the tool. A purposive sample of 32 individual
semistructured interviews and 7 focus groups were
conducted, across five provinces in South Africa. All the
sessions were transcribed and then analysed using a
contextualised interpretative approach, with the assistance
of Atlas. ti. The women were consistently positive about
MomConnect, attaching high value to the content of
the messages and the medium in which they were
delivered. The system was found to work well, with minor
problems in some language translations. Respondents
were enthusiastic about the messages, stating that
the information was of great use and made them feel
empowered in their role as a mother, with some saving the
messages to use as a resource or to share with others. The
most significant problems related to network coverage.
There was strong support for this intervention to continue.
Given the user acceptability of mHealth interventions,
MomConnect appeared to meet the target of identifying
and responding to the recipient’s needs.
Description
Keywords
MomConnect, Text-based information service, Mobile health, South Africa, Pregnant women, New mothers
Citation
Skinner, D. et al. (2018). User assessments and the use of information from MomConnect, a mobile phone text-based information service, by pregnant women and new mothers in South Africa. BMJ Global Health, e000561