A mobile health intervention successfully improved mothers' adherence to safe sleep practices for infants, according to recent research in JAMA.
For the study, researchers — led by Rachel Y. Moon, MD, a pediatrics researcher at University of Virginia in Charlottesville — provided 1,600 mothers with in-person nursing quality improvement interventions related to either safe sleep or breastfeeding. Some mothers then received a 60-day mHealth program, which delivered educational emails or text messages with short videos.
The researchers evaluated mothers based on self-reported adherence to four infant safe sleep practices related to position, location, bedding and whether they used a pacifier. They found mothers who received the mHealth intervention for safe sleep were more likely to apply all four of the best practices. The nursing quality improvement intervention was not an effective intervention for any of the sleep practices.
The researchers hope improving adherence to safe sleep practices will reduce the risk of sudden unexpected infant deaths, although they noted more research is needed to determine a correlation.
"Among mothers of healthy term newborns, a mobile health intervention, but not a nursing quality improvement intervention, improved adherence to infant safe sleep practices compared with control interventions," the study authors concluded. "Whether widespread implementation is feasible or if it reduces sudden and unexpected infant death rates remains to be studied."