Tag: Breastfeeding

WIC Outreach Success with One Call Now

“Maine WIC enjoys a great relationship with OCN. Our team was looking for innovative ways to promote and increase the duration of breastfeeding among WIC Participants and ways to reach out and communicate with people who are not enrolled in the WIC Program, but already eligible.OCN’s team and products assisted Maine WIC in being innovative with a breastfeeding texting program delivered in a variety of languages and two-way texting to try and add more participants to the WIC program.One Call Now has direct WIC contacts nationwide and connected Maine with what other WIC Directors and programs have done, shared documentation and approaches, and helped us build those experiences into what Maine is trying to achieve, with great results.”

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One Call Now for Breastfeeding

Reducing Breastfeeding Disparities Through Outreach, Education, & Engagement

Breastfeeding in the Community: Sharing Stories on Implementations That Work

This overview of the Breastfeeding Project highlights the work of 19 Breastfeeding Project grantees. The goal of sharing these stories is to increase awareness of the processes, successes, and challenges of implementing and expanding access to lactation support services for families and communities that have been historically marginalized and underserved. Click to Read.

Goal

The main goal of the Breastfeeding Project was to increase access and availability of breastfeeding support programs to African American and low-income women by providing direct services.

Challenges

Approximately 60% of the grantees reported that the most common barrier was the recruitment and retention of women to their specific program.

Successes

Much of the success for many of the programs can be attributed to the marketing campaigns promoting services in the community. Social media and text messaging played a significant role in many of the projects’ marketing efforts.

Lessons Learned

  1. Providers must understand community challenges to accessing services and be flexible to modify program activities to meet families’ needs.
  2. Continuous outreach to mothers through multiple channels, such as reminder phone calls, emails, and text messages, is necessary to keep families engaged in the program.
  3. Grantees learned the importance of including family members, partners, and siblings in breastfeeding support services, especially in African American and Hispanic communities.

One Call Now's Breastfeeding Portal

  • Delivering weekly breastfeeding texts in 10 languages
  • Targeted Outreach by *Breastfeeding Amount
  • Encrypted Video Integration
  • Now serving WIC for 20 years since March 2001

Outreach

Education

Engagement

Weekly Text for Breastfeeding

More Research Shows that Weekly Texts Appear to Improve Breastfeeding Rates

Abstract

Background: Breastfeeding is recognized as the optimal method for feeding infants with health gains made by reducing infectious diseases in infancy; and chronic diseases, including obesity, in childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Despite this, exclusivity and duration in developed countries remains resistant to improvement. The objectives of this research were to test if an automated mobile phone text messaging intervention, delivering one text message a week, could increase “any” breastfeeding rates and improve breastfeeding self-efficacy and coping.

Methods: Women were eligible to participate if they were: over eighteen years; had an infant less than three months old; were currently breastfeeding; no diagnosed mental illness; and used a mobile phone. Women in the intervention group received MumBubConnect, a text messaging service with automated responses delivered once a week for 8 weeks. Women in the comparison group received their usual care and were sampled two years after the intervention group. Data collection included online surveys at two time points, week zero and week nine, to measure breastfeeding exclusivity and duration, coping, emotions, accountability and self-efficacy. A range of statistical analyses were used to test for differences between groups. Hierarchical regression was used to investigate change in breastfeeding outcome, between groups, adjusting for co-variates.

Results: The intervention group had 120 participants at commencement and 114 at completion, the comparison group had 114 participants at commencement and 86 at completion. MumBubConnect had a positive impact on the primary outcome of breastfeeding behaviors with women receiving the intervention more likely to continue exclusive breastfeeding; with a 6% decrease in exclusive breastfeeding in the intervention group, compared to a 14% decrease in the comparison group (p < 0.001). This remained significant after controlling for infant age, mother’s income, education and delivery type (p = 0.04). Women in the intervention group demonstrated active coping and were less likely to display emotions-focused coping (p < .001). There was no discernible statistical effect on self-efficacy or accountability.

Conclusions: A fully automated text messaging services appears to improve exclusive breastfeeding duration. The service provides a well-accepted, personalized support service that empowers women to actively resolve breastfeeding issues.

Trial registration: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN12614001091695.