Development And Effectiveness Testing Of A Mobile Health Education Package For Stroke Prevention Among Stroke Survivors

BackgroundInterventions based on social cognitive theory are more patient-centered and focused on principles that can enlighten and encourage adoption of healthy habits. Addressing limited stroke literacy among stroke survivors based on social cognitive theory is an effective means to reduce secondary stroke risk. The use of trending Mobile Health (m-health) devices can be a valuable interventional approach to achieve this through improved stroke literacy. ObjectivesThe objectives of this study were to develop and test effectiveness of m-health based educational package for stroke prevention among stroke survivors. MethodThis was a multimodal methodology involving content development and effectiveness testing using Delphi protocol and pretest-posttest design respectively. Development involved items selection, rating and retention; script writing, translation and recording into an audio and video educational packages. Effectiveness testing involved 30 consenting, consecutively assigned SSVs in each of audio (AIG) and video (VIG) intervention group. Stroke literacy was assessed at baseline, 2nd and 4th week post-intervention. Participants socio-demographic data were also collected. Data was summarized using descriptive and inferential statistics. Alpha value was set at p<0.05. ResultsMajority of the participants were male (63.3%), over 60 years old (51.7%), hypertensive (83.3%) and had tertiary education (31.7%). Knowledge of stroke risk factors improved between AIG and VIG from baseline (11 23{+/-}4 01 and 10.07{+/-}3.24) to 2nd week (17 73{+/-}0.78 and 15.30{+/-}1.78) and 4th week (17.97{+/-}0.18 and 16.77{+/-}1.01) post-intervention respectively. There were significant differences between the two groups (p<0.01). ConclusionMobile-health education based on social cognitive theory effectively improves stroke literacy among SSVs and should be tested among larger samples in the community.