Women's and Midwives' Perspectives on the Design of a Text Messaging Support for Maternal Obesity Services: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

This study was aimed to explore women's and midwives' views on the use of mobile technology in supporting obese pregnant women with healthy lifestyle choices. A purposive sample of 14 women and midwives participated in four focus groups in Doncaster, UK. A content analysis of the transcripts from the first focus group led to the emergence of three main constructs with associated subcategories including Benefits (“modernising,” “motivating,” “reminding,” and “reducing” the sense of isolation), Risks and Limitations (possibility of “being offensive,” “creating pressure or guilt,” and “being influenced by mood”), and Service Delivery (making it “available to all pregnant women,” giving attention to the “message tone” and development of “message content”). They also suggested the use of other modalities such as web-based services for weight management during pregnancy. Based on the above results a text messaging service was developed and presented to the 2nd focus group participants who confirmed the positive views from the first focus group on the use of the text messaging as being supportive and informative. The participants also welcomed “women's engagement and choice” in deciding the content, timing and frequency of messages. The results informed the development of a text messaging service to support maternal obesity management. The implementation and acceptability of this service requires further investigation.

Lived experiences of routine antenatal dietetic services among women with obesity: A qualitative phenomenological study

“…Just in case I'm not meant to be going to the gym and things" (Julie, Parity 1, BMI 30kg/m 2 ) Discussion Participants reported an overall positive experience of attending a dietetic service in pregnancy, identified aspects of the service they felt were particularly helpful and some areas for service improvement relating to referral, delivery and content of the service. Other studies have shown an overall positive experience of antenatal weight management support (Soltani et al, 2012;Fealy et al, 2014;. However, there were two women whose discussions were predominantly negative.…”

The importance of service‐users’ perspectives: A systematic review of qualitative evidence reveals overlooked critical features of weight management programmes

“…We identified 21 studies reported in 26 papers that reported service‐user views on WMPs (see Figure for PRISMA figure presenting flow of studies through the review). The 21 studies reported the views of 507 service users, and there was a good range in terms of gender, age and socio‐economic status, but limited data from minority‐ethnic service users; just one study focused on a programme specifically for a minority‐ethnic group and most others which provided information on the ethnicity of participants stated that they were predominantly white British.…”

Varying social media post types differentially impacts engagement in a behavioral weight loss intervention

“…Previous studies have examined the efficacy of evidencebased theories for developing posts using Motivational Interviewing [12] and social cognitive theory [8] for internet-and social media-based interventions. In addition, qualitative studies have examined what types of posts participants preferred receiving in the context of a weight loss intervention (such as motivating, planning, overcoming barriers, and prompting for self monitoring) [13]. However, previous studies have not examined what types of posts most engage participants in social media-based interventions, and if this engagement, in turn, promotes weight loss.…”