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Breastfeeding app shows promise in supporting first-time mothers

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Written by Ann Williams on April 30, 2016

Breastfeeding was sigmother and baby renderingnificantly increased by a mobile phone application that provided supportive texts and an online community to new moms, a new University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus pilot study found.

An abstract of the study, “Mother’s Milk Messaging (MMM): A Pilot Study of an App to Support Breastfeeding in First Time Mothers,” will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2016 Meeting in Baltimore on May 1. Lead investigator Maya Bunik, associate professor of pediatrics at the CU School of Medicine, developed the app with colleagues in the mHealth Impact Laboratory at the Colorado School of Public Health at CU Anschutz. Bunik leads the Breastfeeding Management Clinic at Children’s Hospital Colorado and authored the PAS book: “Breastfeeding Telephone Triage and Advice.”

“We wanted as many mothers and babies as possible to take advantage of the health benefits of breastfeeding and all babies to be offered human milk as their first food, and we know that women of child-bearing age are in the generation most likely to own a cell phone and use texting to communicate,” Bunik said. “Cell phones have been shown to be an effective way to increase the prescribed use of HIV medication, to help people quit smoking and to better manage diabetes. Our pilot study suggests that they also can be useful with breastfeeding support and management.”

The study is another example of CU Anschutz researchers and clinicians bringing advances in the laboratory directly to the clinic to improve patient care.

Among study participants who used the app, 95 percent were currently breastfeeding three months after giving birth, compared with 83 percent of the control group. The same amount (95 percent) were feeding babies breastmilk more than 80 percent of the time, compared with 78 percent of women who hadn’t used the app. Participants who used the app also had greater confidence ratings about breastfeeding issues, such as knowing if their babies were getting enough milk and coping with breastfeeding challenges.

Women participating in the study began interacting with the MMM app roughly six weeks before and after their delivery date and received five to seven messages to the app as push notifications via text each week. About a quarter of the text messages asked for a response from participants, querying them about normal stooling patterns in babies in the first 4 to 7 days of life, for example, or whether they knew that babies fed exclusively with breast milk in their first months of life have lower rates of obesity later. The app also linked participants to a private Facebook page where informative links, supportive comments and brief videos were posted.

Bunik, who monitored user comments and questions and provided responses, said a larger trial is being planned.

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