Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jan 21, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Jan 21, 2019 - Jan 28, 2019
Date Accepted: Apr 28, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Feasibility and ACceptability of a mobile Technology intervention to Support [FACTS] post-abortion care in British Columbia: Phase I
ABSTRACT
Background:
Over 30% of women in Canada undergo an abortion. Despite the prevalence of the procedure, stigma surrounding abortion in Canada leads to barriers for women to access this service. Vast majority of the care is concentrated in urban settings. There is evidence to support utilization of innovative mobile technology solutions also known as mobile health (mHealth) to empower women to safely and effectively self-manage aspects of the abortion process. This study is part one of a three phase study that utilizes a human-centered design methodology to develop a mHealth solution to specifically support follow-up after an induced surgical abortion.
Objective:
Objectives for this study were: 1) To understand how women at three surgical abortion clinics in an urban center of British Columbia utilize their mobile phones to access healthcare information and 2) To understand women’s preferences of content and design of a mobile intervention that will support follow-up care after an induced abortion including contraceptive use.
Methods:
Study design was based on “Development-evaluation-implementation” process from Medical Research Council Framework for Complex Medical Interventions. This was a mixed methods formative study. Women (ages 14 – 45) were recruited from three urban abortion facilities in British Columbia who underwent a therapeutic abortion. Using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), a cross-sectional survey was conducted. Interview topics included: demographic information, type of wireless device used, cell phone usage, acceptable information to include in a mobile intervention to support women’s abortion care, willingness to use a mobile phone to obtain reproductive health information, optimal strategies to use the mobile intervention to support women, understand preferences for health information resources, design qualities in a mobile intervention important for ease of use, privacy and security. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, t-tests and Chi square tests where appropriate. Qualitative analysis was conducted with NVivo using grounded theory. This study was approved by the local Ethics board.
Results:
Quantitative waiting-room survey was completed by 50 participants and 8 semi-structured interviews were completed and analyzed. Average age of participants was 26 years. 94% owned a smart phone, 85% used their personal phones to go online and 85% would use their cell phone to assist in clinical care. Qualitative analysis demonstrated that women prefer a comprehensive website that included secure email or text notifications to provide tools and resources for emotional well-being, contraceptive decision making, general sexual health and post-procedure care.
Conclusions:
A community based mixed methods approach allowed us to understand the key components of a mobile innovations that will assist in the development and testing of a mobile intervention to support post-abortion care.
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.