An mHealth Intervention to Reduce Gestational Obesity (mami-educ): Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Background: The World Federation of Obesity warns that the main health problem of the next decade will be childhood obesity. It is known that factors such as gestational obesity produce profound effects on fetal programming and are strong predictors of overweight and obesity in children. Therefore, establishing healthy eating behaviors during pregnancy is the key to the primary prevention of the intergenerational transmission of obesity. Mobile health (mHealth) programs are potentially more effective than face-to-face interventions, especially during a public health emergency such as the COVID-19 outbreak. Objective: This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of an mHealth intervention to reduce excessive weight gain in pregnant women who attend family health care centers. Methods: The design of the intervention corresponds to a classic randomized clinical trial. The participants are pregnant women in the first trimester of pregnancy who live in urban and semiurban areas. Before starting the intervention, a survey will be applied to identify the barriers and facilitators perceived by pregnant women to adopt healthy eating behaviors. The dietary intake will be estimated in the same way. The intervention will last for 12 weeks and consists of sending messages through a multimedia messaging service with food education, addressing the 3 domains of learning (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor). Descriptive statistics will be used to analyze the demographic, socioeconomic, and obstetric characteristics of the respondents. The analysis strategy follows the intention-to-treat principle. Logistic regression analysis will be used to compare the intervention with routine care on maternal pregnancy outcome and perinatal outcome. Results: The recruitment of study participants began in May 2022 and will end in May 2023. Results include the effectiveness of the intervention in reducing the incidence of excessive gestational weight gain. We also will examine the maternal-fetal outcome as well as the barriers and facilitators that influence the weight gain of pregnant women. Conclusions: Data from this effectiveness trial will determine whether mami-educ successfully reduces rates of excessive weight gain during pregnancy. If successful, the findings of this study will generate knowledge to design and implement personalized prevention strategies for gestational obesity that can be included in routine primary care.