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Development and evaluation of a mother-centered toolkit for postpartum behavioral and psychosocial health

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Abstract

The well-being of mothers and infants is influenced by mothers’ behavioral and psychosocial health (B&PH), yet it is often neglected during healthcare visits. To address this gap, this study aimed to develop and evaluate acceptability of a postpartum toolkit (screening questionnaire, feedback template, and decision aid) to promote B&PH. Using a decision-making model and participatory design (N = 24), a B&PH screening questionnaire was refined, and prototypes of feedback templates and decision aids for selecting health goals were developed. Most mothers in this multi-ethnic sample rated the resulting toolkit as easy to understand/use and useful, and reported they were likely to act on their health goals. Toolkit ease of use and usefulness ratings were largely unrelated to education, ethnicity, and acculturation. In conclusion, findings support the toolkit’s acceptability and applicability to women of diverse backgrounds. The toolkit is a promising strategy to engage mothers in setting goals to promote B&PH.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded in part by the Luci B. Johnson Centennial Professorship in Nursing, University of Texas at Austin. The authors wish to acknowledge Elizabeth Loika for her facilitation of recruitment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Nursing, The University of Texas at Austin, 1710 Red River St., Austin, TX, USA

    Lorraine O. Walker, Bobbie S. Sterling, Heather Becker, Sherry Hendrickson & Bo Xie

  2. School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Bo Xie

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  1. Lorraine O. Walker
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  2. Bobbie S. Sterling
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Correspondence to Lorraine O. Walker.

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Lorraine O. Walker, Bobbie S. Sterling, Heather Becker, Sherry Hendrickson and Bo Xie declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Human and animals rights and Informed consent

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Walker, L.O., Sterling, B.S., Becker, H. et al. Development and evaluation of a mother-centered toolkit for postpartum behavioral and psychosocial health. J Behav Med 41, 591–599 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-018-9928-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-018-9928-5

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