Maintenance Notice

Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Who will be affected?

Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research

Date Submitted: Mar 10, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 10, 2018 - Mar 29, 2018
Date Accepted: Aug 21, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

Combining Technology and Research to Prevent Scald Injuries (the Cool Runnings Intervention): Randomized Controlled Trial

Burgess J, Watt K, Kimble RM, Cameron CM

Combining Technology and Research to Prevent Scald Injuries (the Cool Runnings Intervention): Randomized Controlled Trial

J Med Internet Res 2018;20(10):e10361

DOI: 10.2196/10361

PMID: 30305263

PMCID: 6234332

Combining Technology and Research to Prevent Scald Injuries (the Cool Runnings Intervention): Randomized Controlled Trial

  • Jacqueline Burgess; 
  • Kerrianne Watt; 
  • Roy M Kimble; 
  • Cate M Cameron

ABSTRACT

Background:

New technologies, internet accessibility, social media, and increased smartphone ownership provide new opportunities for health researchers to communicate and engage target audiences. An innovative burn prevention intervention was developed using these channels.

Objective:

The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of Cool Runnings, an app-based intervention to increase knowledge of childhood burn risk (specifically hot beverage scalds) and correct burn first aid among mothers of young children.

Methods:

This was a 2-group, parallel, single-blinded randomized controlled trial (RCT). Participants were women aged 18 years and above, living in Queensland, Australia, with at least 1 child aged 5-12 months at time of enrollment. The primary outcome measures were change in knowledge about risk of burns and correct burn first aid assessed via 2 methods: (1) overall score and (2) categorized as adequate (score=4) versus inadequate (score<4). Efficacy of gamification techniques was also assessed.

Results:

In total, 498 participants were recruited via social media and enrolled. At the 6-month follow-up, 244 participants completed the posttest questionnaire. Attrition rates in both groups were similar. Participants who remained in the study did not differ from those lost to follow-up on any characteristics except education level. Although similar at baseline, intervention group participants achieved significantly greater improvement in overall knowledge posttest than control group participants on both primary outcome measures (overall knowledge intervention: mean [SD] of overall knowledge 2.68 [SD 1.00] for intervention vs 2.13 [SD 1.03] for control; 20.7% [25/121] adequate in intervention vs 7.3% [2/123] in control). Consequently, the number needed to treat was 7.46. Logistic regression showed participants exposed to the highest level of disadvantage had 7.3 times higher odds of improved overall knowledge scores than participants in other levels of disadvantage. There were also significant correlations between gamification techniques and knowledge change (P<.001). In addition, odds of knowledge improvement between baseline and 6-month follow-up was higher in participants with low-moderate app activity compared with no app activity (odds ratio [OR] 8.59, 95% CI 2.9-25.02) and much higher in participants with high app activity (OR 18.26, 95% CI 7.1-46.8).

Conclusions:

Despite substantial loss to follow-up, this RCT demonstrates the Cool Runnings app was an effective intervention for improving knowledge about risks of hot beverage scalds and burn first aid in mothers of young children. The benefits of combining gamification elements in the intervention were also highlighted. Given the low cost and large reach of smartphone apps to deliver content to and engage with targeted populations, the results from this RCT provide important information on how smartphone apps can be used for widespread injury prevention campaigns and public health campaigns generally. Trial Registration: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12616000019404; https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=369745&showOriginal=true&isReview=true (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/72b1E8gTW)


 Citation

Please cite as:

Burgess J, Watt K, Kimble RM, Cameron CM

Combining Technology and Research to Prevent Scald Injuries (the Cool Runnings Intervention): Randomized Controlled Trial

J Med Internet Res 2018;20(10):e10361

DOI: 10.2196/10361

PMID: 30305263

PMCID: 6234332

Per the author's request the PDF is not available.

© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.