1. The role of an mHealth intervention in improving knowledge and skills of accredited social health activists in tribal areas of Gujarat, India: a nested study within an implementation research trial.
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Shah, Shobha, Shinde, Aakash, Anand, Ankit, Modi, Dhiren, Desai, Gayatri, Bhatt, Hardik, Gopalan, Ravi, Dholakia, Nishith, Vaghela, Prakash, Desai, Shrey, and Shah, Pankaj
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MOBILE health , *HEALTH education , *MATERNAL health , *INFANT health , *PUBLIC health - Abstract
Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness of an mHealth intervention in improving knowledge and skills of accredited social health activists in improving maternal, newborn and child health care in India.Methods: This was a nested cross-sectional study within a cluster randomised controlled trial. The intervention was a mobile phone application which has inbuilt health education videos, algorithms to diagnose complications and training tools to educate accredited social health activists. A total of 124 were randomly selected from the control (n = 61) and intervention (n = 63) arms of the larger study after six months of training in Bharuch and Narmada districts of Gujarat.Results: The knowledge of accredited social health activists regarding pregnancy (OR: 2.51, CI: 1.12-5.64) and newborn complications (OR: 2.57, CI: 1.12-5.92) was significantly higher in the intervention arm compared to the control arm. The knowledge of complications during delivery (OR: 1.36, CI: 0.62-2.98) and the postpartum (OR: 1.06, CI: 0.48-2.33) period was similar in both groups. The activists from the intervention arm demonstrated better skills for measuring temperature (OR: 4.25, CI: 1.66-10.89) of newborns compared to the control group.Conclusion: The results suggest potential benefits of this mHealth intervention for improving knowledge and skills of accredited social health activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]- Published
- 2018
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