Pregnancy prevention at her fingertips: A text- and mobile video–based pilot intervention to promote contraceptive methods among college women

Abstract

Objective:

This paper reports on a pilot study evaluating the feasibility and acceptability of a text- and mobile video–based intervention to educate women and men attending college about non-daily contraception, with a particular focus on long-acting reversible contraception (LARC). A secondary objective is to describe the process of intervention development.

Setting:

Participants included undergraduate students attending a large urban US university between September and November 2011.

Design:

Using a participatory research strategy, investigators developed, delivered and evaluated a pilot mobile intervention using a texting interface, mobile videos and a contraceptive provider directory.

Method:

Descriptive statistics summarise the data collected from daily text-in analytics and web-based survey responses.

Results:

The texting interface received 1,203 visits; mobile videos were accessed 446 times. The provider directory was used by 10% of participants. Survey respondents’ (N = 82) motivation for choosing non-daily contraception included cost (57%), side effects (55%), effectiveness (55%) and low recall effort (23%). Most participants (88%) would/might recommend these methods to others.

Conclusion:

This study demonstrated that text- and mobile video–based modalities are appropriate and feasible to deliver contraceptive education to college students. There is a critical opportunity to reach large numbers of potential users through mobile health (mHealth) interventions to disseminate accurate information and link to healthcare services.