Poster #160 - Educating parents about infant cognitive development through postpartum care: Preliminary findings of an implementation study

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Prevention and Interventions

Integrative Statement

Purpose: Socioeconomic disparities in the early childhood language milieu have been linked to negative impacts on children’s language acquisition, later educational attainment, and lifelong adverse health outcomes. Empowering low-income parents with enhanced knowledge and supportive behaviors to enrich their children’s early language environments offers a promising approach in narrowing the achievement gap.

Hospitalization that occurs immediately postpartum provides a unique opportunity to educate parents from low-SES/disadvantaged backgrounds who are often hard to reach. Yet, the existing postpartum education predominantly focuses on breastfeeding, physical development, and sleep/car safety, without much attention on infant cognitive/language development.

The newborn curriculum is an online video intervention tailored for parents of newborns with a key message that caregiver talk and responsiveness promote infant cognitive development and language skills. Results of a pilot study showed that both middle-SES and high-SES mothers significantly gained knowledge from the curriculum, whereas their low-SES English-speaking counterparts did not. To enhance learning, the latest version of the curriculum incorporated an interactive learning component by requiring responses to questions during the video. Moreover, the curriculum is designed to be implemented in conjunction with existing postpartum care by trained healthcare professionals.

Together, the aims of this on-going implementation study were to: (1) examine whether the curriculum significantly promotes maternal knowledge of infant cognitive/language development similarly across education level; (2) examine whether the interactive learning component significantly enhances maternal learning (based on post-intervention assessment) similarly across education level.

Methods: Participants included 501 mothers who delivered a singleton neonate without serious medical complications at one of four hospitals in the Midwest and Southeast U.S. regions. Participants were randomly assigned to watch the curriculum either with or without the interactive component. Their knowledge was assessed using the Scale of Parental Expectations and Knowledge (SPEAK) before and after the curriculum. Demographic information was collected. Education level was examined as a dichotomous variable, indicating whether participants had 4-year college degrees or not.

Results: Two paired samples t-tests were conducted to compare baseline SPEAK scores with post-intervention scores, at each education level. Results showed that both less educated and more educated mothers significantly gained knowledge from the curriculum compared with their baseline scores; (Table 1). Moreover, two independent-samples t-tests were conducted to examine differences in the post-intervention SPEAK scores between mothers who received the interactive component and those who did not, at each education level. Results showed that mothers who received the interactive component had significantly higher post-intervention SPEAK scores than mothers who did not, but only among those who did not have a 4-year college degree (Table 2).

Conclusion: Preliminary findings from this implementation study showed the newborn curriculum is effective in educating mothers about infant brain and language development, and importantly this promotion of knowledge is significant across education levels. Incorporating an interactive component into the curriculum enhanced learning for mothers with lower educational attainments most significantly. Furthermore, this ongoing study has provided initial evidence that the curriculum is cost-effective, scalable, addresses the limitations of current postpartum education, and can be implemented successfully within regular postpartum care.

Authors

• Christy Leung, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alison Hundertmark, The University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Nisha Palla, The University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dana Suskind, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author