Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Aug 4, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Aug 9, 2018 - Oct 4, 2018
Date Accepted: Nov 5, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Effects of Social Media and Mobile Health Apps on Pregnancy Care: Meta-Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
The use of social media and mobile health (mHealth) apps has been increasing in pregnancy care. However, the effectiveness of these interventions is still unclear.
Objective:
We conducted a meta-analysis to examine the effectiveness of these interventions with regard to different health outcomes of pregnant and postpartum women; and to investigate the characteristics and components of interventions that may affect program effectiveness.
Methods:
We performed a comprehensive literature search of major electronic databases and reference sections of related reviews and eligible studies. A random effects model was used to calculate the effect size.
Results:
Fifteen RCT studies published in and before June 2018 that met the inclusion criteria were included in the meta-analysis. The interventions were effective in promoting maternal physical health, including weight management, gestational diabetes mellitus control, and asthma control, with a moderate to large effect size (d = 0.72). Large effect sizes were also found for improving maternal mental health (d = 0.84) and knowledge about pregnancy (d = 0.80). Weight control interventions using wearable devices were more effective.
Conclusions:
The social media and mHealth apps have the potential to be widely used in improving maternal well-being. More large-scale clinical trials focusing on different health outcomes are suggested for future studies.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© 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.