Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Apr 19, 2020
Date Accepted: Jan 6, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Protocol for the process evaluation of an application-based salt reduction intervention in schoolchildren and their families (AppSalt) in China
ABSTRACT
Background:
Dietary salt intake is a major risk factor for high blood pressure. The AppSalt program is a cluster randomized controlled trial to investigate the feasibility and efficacy of a mobile health (m-health) intervention package for salt reduction among schoolchildren and their families. As the first m-health intervention program on salt reduction conducted at primary schools in China, there are many uncertainties regarding its implementation and causal mechanisms besides of its efficacy.
Objective:
This protocol presents the process evaluation of the AppSalt program, which aims to monitor the implementation of the program, explain its causal mechanisms, and provide evidence for scaling up the program nationwide.
Methods:
We will collect and analyse data on five process evaluation dimensions: fidelity of implementation, dose delivered, dose received, reach, and related contextual factors. Data exported from the management website and other routinely collected monitoring data will be the quantitative data sources for this study. Semi-structured interviews of purposely selected intervention participants and key stakeholders for local health and education authorities will be conducted to provide in-depth feedbacks and suggestions regarding the intervention package and future scale-up. Key quantitative process evaluation indicators will include participation rate of each health education course, and salt reduction activities and will be summarized as medians, means, and proportions as appropriate. Qualitative data will be thematically analysed and triangulated with the quantitative data.
Results:
The AppSalt program has completed its one-year intervention in 27 selected schools at the end of 2019. Preliminary analysis of monitoring data during the intervention shows high level of participation rate of online health education courses. Purposively selected participants and key informants are interviewed. The audio recordings are being transcribed.
Conclusions:
The findings of this study will be disseminated through presentations, publications and social media to help researchers understand the implementation of the AppSalt program in real-world settings. Furthermore, this process evaluation will be informative for other researchers and policy-makers interested in replicating the AppSalt program and in the design their own salt reduction intervention. Clinical Trial: ChiCTR1800017553
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
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.