Evaluation study of the GrowthGuide app message service

The Growth Guide facilitates Youth Health Care services in providing preventative information to parents. The messaging service in the GrowthGuide app has an important function in this. Through its messaging service, preventive messages are sent to parents based on age of their child and/or postcode. By using this eHealth intervention, parents can easily be reached and receive customized messages. Preventive education can thus better fit in with the age or life stage of the child. The chance that parents will accept the information provided, which is necessary to support their child optimally in a healthy upbringing, is thereby increased. A former small-scale cross-sectional study into the GrowtGuide app message service also seems to point in that direction. In this study, parents who used the app had more knowledge about Vitamin D and dental care and showed healthier behavior in this area. Based on this single cross-sectional study, it is not possible to conclude that the app is effective. A larger-scale experimental study is needed to be able to demonstrate and substantiate the effectiveness of the GrowthGuide app messaging service.
Through this study we want to gain insight into the extent to which the information that parents receive via the GrowthGuide app messaging service leads to a change in knowledge, attitude and behavior. We also want to investigate whether this differs according to educational level. Better insight into the effectiveness can contribute to an optimal use of the GrowthGuide app, both towards parents and JGZ professionals and organizations.
In this study, we investigate for parents of children in the 14-20 months age group, the effect of the use of the GrowthGuide app messaging service on their knowledge, attitude and behavior with regard to drinking water, dental care and vitamin D supplementation. In a randomized design, a user group (using the app, including messaging service) and a control group (not using the app) performs a pre- and post-test by means of a questionnaire survey. In addition, focus group discussions are held with parents to gain insight into the use of the app and the messaging service and the effect of this on their attitude and behavior. In total, this research project has a duration of 24 months.
The results will be distributed to a wide audience, so that as many organizations as possible can make use of the acquired knowledge and experience. In addition, we hope to contribute to building up the 'evidence' for the use of eHealth tools in (youth) health care.

To what extent does the GrowthGuide app message service contribute to healthy lifestyle choices of parents with children aged 14 to 20 months.

T0: baseline measurement (age child 13,5 months);
T1: 7 months follow up(age child 20,5 months);

Through the GrowthGuide app message service parents receive in-app messages based on the age of their child. In the age group 14-20 months, parents receive a message every two weeks. All parents who use the app and have started a growth path for their child, including the age (= mandatory field) receive these messages.
Parents see a message appear in the growth path when they receive it. In addition, parents see the message in the message inbox of the app. Under an unread message in the inbox the date is next to 'unread' in blue.
Parents can turn on a push notification so that they get a pop-up notification on the screen of their phone when a new message is received.