(P20-032-20) Evaluation of a Web-Based Educational Platform for the Baby-Act Trial

Objectives: The Baby-Act trial is an intervention to prevent infant obesity by promoting healthy infant physical activity, sleep, and eating behaviors among mothers participating in WIC in Puerto Rico. The intervention is delivered through a mobile application. Upon launching the study platform, many Baby-Act participants reported difficulties. Issues included site specific such as poor connectivity, or platform specific (platform required several steps to download, register, and save/send data after completing each lesson). Barriers to adequate dissemination of intervention content, demanded the systematic assessment of potential solutions of challenges as reported by participants to achieve study goals. Our objective was to evaluate a web-based educational platform (www.lessonly.com) as an alternative for intervention delivery in the Baby-Act Trial in a sample similar to the main study population. This alternate platform is an easy and simple educational website that can be accessed by a link sent by text messages on their mobile phones.

Methods: WIC nutritionists collaborated to identify active WIC participants and invite them to participate in a semi-structured face-to-face interview. Participants were provided with an Informative Sheet and instructions to access the webpage, register as users and complete intervention lessons. After completing the tasks, trained interviewers asked about their experience accessing the page, registration and completion of lessons.  Additional questions included adequacy of instructions and user confidence. Field notes were taken for analysis.

Results: A total of 9 participants completed the interview; 100% reported ease in accessing and registering on the platform and being able to view the pages without distortion. A total of 89% were able to successfully complete at least one lesson (one participant had very poor signal). Furthermore, 100% reported being confident in using the page and stated they would use it again.

Conclusions: The study found this website to be user-friendly and a viable alternative to mobile apps for future intervention delivery among WIC participants.

Funding Sources: RCMI grant U54 MD007600 (National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities) from the National Institutes of Health