Teen Mom Study project manager and community health workers

Teen Mom Study

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Teen Mom Study

Description:

The overall purpose of the Teen Mom Study is to test the effectiveness of #MamaLetsMove – a 24-week mHealth and peer health coaching intervention paired with the care provided by the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) – to increase physical activity (PA) and reduce sedentary behavior (SB) in pregnant, Black teens in the Mississippi Delta. Concurrently, a robust implementation evaluation is being conducted to determine the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention and to identify threats to organizational uptake, scalability, and sustainability.

The #MamaLetsMove intervention uses a theory-based, multi-level systems change approach. At the systems level, racially concordant young adult (18 to 25 years) WIC moms (n=4) trained as community health workers and in evidence-based peer health coaching, are paired with pregnant teens to (1) address social needs and (2) provide support for self-directed behavior change.

At the individual level, pregnant, Black teens are being given three empirically supported behavior goals including (1) watching fewer than 2 hours of TV per day, (2) walking more than 10,000 steps per day - or - (3) engaging in more than 20 minutes of organized exercise like prenatal yoga per day. The intervention is designed to build social cognition, affect, and skills using four intervention components – a wearable tracker, interactive self-monitoring text messages with automated feedback, tailored skills training texts linked to digital materials, and peer health coaching.

The central hypothesis is that augmenting usual WIC care with #MamaLetsMove will improve WIC’s capacity to serve families in rural communities and empower pregnant, Black teens to prioritize and improve their health. This is believed to be the first digital health intervention study designed with and for a pregnant adolescent population. This study will add to our understanding of optimal digital health and peer health coaching interventions, advance implementation science literature by studying a scalable and sustainable intervention in a novel setting, and contribute to the urgent national agenda to advance Black maternal health equity.  

Team:

  • Principal Investigator: Abigail Gamble, PhD
  • Co-Investigators: William D. Hillegass, MD, PhD; Victoria M. Gholar, DNP; Sharon J. Herring, MD, MPH; Justin B. Moore, PhD
  • Staff: Rolanda J. Buck, MS – Project Manager-II; Kaveyan Thompson – Community Health Worker; Skyellar Harris – Community Health Worker; Jakaysha Toaster – Community Health Worker

Partners:

Publications:

Changes in Physical Activity and Television Viewing From Pre-pregnancy Through Postpartum Among a Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Perinatal Adolescent Population - PubMed (nih.gov)

Recruitment planning for clinical trials with a vulnerable perinatal adolescent population using the Clinical Trials Transformative Initiative framework and principles of partner and community engagement - PubMed (nih.gov)

Recruitment, Retention, and Engagement Strategies for Exercise Interventions With Rural Antenatal Adolescents: Qualitative Interviews With WIC Providers - PubMed (nih.gov)

Effects of eHealth interventions on physical activity and weight among pregnant and postpartum women and the sociodemographic characteristics of study populations: a systematic review protocol - PubMed (nih.gov)

APHA's 2020 VIRTUAL Annual Meeting and Expo (Oct. 24 - 28) (confex.com)

Funding:

  • National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities under award number P50MD017338
  • Office for the Advancement of Telehealth, Health Resources and Services Administration under award number U66RH31459
  • National Institute of General Medical Sciences under award number U54GM115428

For More Information Contact:

Abigail Gamble
agamble2@umc.edu
601-815-9482