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)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Effects of Social Media and Mobile Health Apps on Pregnancy Care: Meta-Analysis
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.
Objectives:
We conducted a meta-analysis to examine the effectiveness of these interventions with regard to different health outcomes in pregnant and postpartum women and investigate the characteristics and components of interventions that may affect program effectiveness.
Method:
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 randomized controlled trial 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.
Conclusion:
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.