JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

In the early months of life, allowing infants access to unstructured, unrestricted play in their home environment is imperative for development and increased physical activity. It is therefore important to focus interventions on these formative months, encouraging healthy movement behaviours as early as possible. In real world settings, determining feasibility and acceptability of an intervention is important to understand the practicality and suitability of an intervention for scale up and implementation in specific contexts.

Objective:

This study aimed to 1) Test the feasibility and acceptability of an intervention aimed at improving maternal health literacy (HL) around infant play and development, and 2) determine participants’ understanding and perceived relevance of the study outcome questionnaires.

Methods:

Mothers assigned to the PLAY Study intervention group at 6-months postpartum (n=68) received telephonic or in-person check-in and assessments every 2 months, and HL intervention content and resources delivered via a mobile app, every week. Feasibility was measured by calculating participant contact (adherence) and frequency of access to the content via the app. An acceptability questionnaire and two participant Focus Group Discussions (FGD) captured and explored the acceptability of the intervention at the end of the study (12 months).

Results:

17 participants attended FGD1 (n=8) and FGD2 (n=9). 49 participants completed the acceptability questionnaire. The HL content was found to be highly acceptable in the questionnaire and FGDs. Over 80% of participants attended the 12-month exit appointment. Most of the participants (70%) could access the intervention content over the 12 months of the PLAY Study and of those 59% looked at content more than once a week and 10% every day. Less than a quarter only looked at the content sporadically. Access was impacted by technical difficulties attributed to using inconsistent external service providers.

Conclusions:

The study was found to be acceptable to participants and feasible in this setting, highlighting the importance of developing the intervention content with the guidance of community members. The high acceptability of the intervention content and belief that other mothers would benefit from it, provides great potential for seeing effectiveness in similar communities. Clinical Trial: This trial was registered with the Pan African Clinical Trials Registry (https://pactr.samrc.ac.za) on 10 February 2022 (identifier: PACTR202202747620052)