Building health literacy around pregnancy, birth and early life of the infant by developing a unified, research-informed and socially-inclusive prenatal and postnatal web-based education programme for parents-to-be and new parents Erasmus Project

Project Title

Building health literacy around pregnancy, birth and early life of the infant by developing a unified, research-informed and socially-inclusive prenatal and postnatal web-based education programme for parents-to-be and new parents

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Health and wellbeing; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

The transition to parenthood presents opportunities to promote mother-child health. Though of varying quality, internet information-seeking is prevalent while attendance in antenatal classes is low. Digital innovation can support access to timely and valid information for all, a key component of WHO’s Respectful Maternity Care. The project formed a strategic partnership with the aim of developing a “proof of concept” for cross-national research-informed digital innovation exchange. The project brought Baby Buddy, an innovative and award-winning UK-based app developed by partner Best Beginnings, Forward, as Baby Buddy Cyprus is significantly enhanced (multilingual) and expanded (with socio-culturally relevant material), achieved through a structured iterative research process, developed specifically for this purpose. Within a Participatory Action Research (PAR) framework, formative qualitative and quantitative methods were employed to engage with the professional and parent community in order to deliver a locally relevant resource for future parents and a valuable tool for assisting healthcare providers in their educational role. The project:
(a) engaged in priority-setting and consensus-building among health professionals and parents-to-be/new parents to shape the content of Baby Buddy. The process assessed the cross-national relevance and suitability of the material (IO1) from the original Baby Buddy to the medicalized and decentralized healthcare system in Cyprus and Greece, resulting in adopting 104 original videos, as well as around 65 000 words of written content, covering a range of topics, chosen through a Delphi process involving 193 health professionals and 275 parents.
(b) performed a series of focus groups with a diverse set of 95 new mums and mums-to-be in Cyprus, Greece and Germany (IO2) to gain an in-death understanding of their information-seeking behaviour in the context of health literacy skills and participation in decision-making. This process clearly highlighted that “traditional” antenatal education arrangements are not effective in addressing the women’s needs and a shift is needed from current practices of unguided information-searching.
(c) co-created with local parents-to-be/new parents and health professionals 112 new short videos (IO3) based on principles of effective health communication (Baby Buddy Forward YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClizlqJ5Fc5iGbe54l-c7fw )
(d) developed the multilingual (Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Russian, English) webapp platform (IO4) http://babybuddy.com.cy and http://babybuddy.com.el with over 1800 users by the end of the project timeline and a growth rate of around 150-200 new registrations per month.
(e) proposed a system-change intervention ,designed based on behavioural change theory to inform the policy recommendations of effectively embedding Baby Buddy in clinical and community practice (IO5).
Baby Buddy acts as a day-to-day companion offering evidence-based information and emotional support. It aims at building health literacy around childbirth with wider reach to drive a “bottom-up” change in participating countries and beyond. The target audiences were reached via a range of dissemination activities and a series of workshops. Initial analysis of current users’ socio-demographic profile and web analytics reveal that the project had a large impact in terms of uptake and reach in only a short period of time. The resource will continue to benefit future parents as well as health professionals in their role as educators, reached via the professional associations who participated in the co-creation process. The consortium represented a multi-sectoral partnership of organizations, all with a special interest in maternal and child health, from three academic institutions in Cyprus (Cyprus University of Technology), Greece (University of West Attica) and Germany (Evangelische Hochschule Berlin) and NGOs/SME at different level of capacity – Best Beginnings (UK), with a track-record of digital tools for supporting new parents, Birth Forward (CY), a young dynamic and multicultural advocate of childbirth and Cosmoanelixis (GR), with an entrepreneurship record in lifelong learning. This partnership allowed further development and internationalization of an innovative approach and tool to deliver an online learning environment which facilitates the acquisition of knowledge, skills, competences and support for parents in line with adult learning. The learning space is extended from a medical setting or birth preparation class to a familiar and socially-inclusive context provided when it is actually needed. As a trusted source of information, Baby Buddy can significantly impact current practices through enhancing the user-provider communication and promoting shared decision-making. The project is a “proof of concept” for a complementary model of “antenatal education for all” as well as a methodology for further internationalization.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 342088,44 Eur

Project Coordinator

TECHNOLOGIKO PANEPISTIMIO KYPROU & Country: CY

Project Partners

• PANEPISTIMIO DYTIKIS ATTIKIS
• Evangelische Hochschule Berlin
• Best Beginnings
• Birth Forward
• cosmoanelixis IKE