Abstract

Background: The World Federation of Obesity warns that the main health problem of the next decade will be childhood obesity.It is known that factors such as gestational obesity produce profound effects on fetal programming and are strong predictors ofoverweight and obesity in children. Therefore, establishing healthy eating behaviors during pregnancy is the key to the primaryprevention of the intergenerational transmission of obesity. Mobile health (mHealth) programs are potentially more effective thanface-to-face interventions, especially during a public health emergency such as the COVID-19 outbreak.Objective: This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of an mHealth intervention to reduce excessive weight gain in pregnantwomen who attend family health care centers.Methods: The design of the intervention corresponds to a classic randomized clinical trial. The participants are pregnant womenin the first trimester of pregnancy who live in urban and semiurban areas. Before starting the intervention, a survey will be appliedto identify the barriers and facilitators perceived by pregnant women to adopt healthy eating behaviors. The dietary intake willbe estimated in the same way. The intervention will last for 12 weeks and consists of sending messages through a multimediamessaging service with food education, addressing the 3 domains of learning (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor). Descriptivestatistics will be used to analyze the demographic, socioeconomic, and obstetric characteristics of the respondents. The analysisstrategy follows the intention-to-treat principle. Logistic regression analysis will be used to compare the intervention with routinecare on maternal pregnancy outcome and perinatal outcome.Results: The recruitment of study participants began in May 2022 and will end in May 2023. Results include the effectivenessof the intervention in reducing the incidence of excessive gestational weight gain. We also will examine the maternal-fetal outcomeas well as the barriers and facilitators that influence the weight gain of pregnant women.Conclusions: Data from this effectiveness trial will determine whether mami-educ successfully reduces rates of excessiveweight gain during pregnancy. If successful, the findings of this study will generate knowledge to design and implement personalizedprevention strategies for gestational obesity that can be included in routine primary care.Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05114174; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05114174 (18) (PDF) A randomized controlled trial to evaluate "mami-educ", a mHealth intervention to reduce gestational obesity: Towards personalized prevention. (Preprint). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366317170_A_randomized_controlled_trial_to_evaluate_mami-educ_a_mHealth_intervention_to_reduce_gestational_obesity_Towards_personalized_prevention_Preprint#fullTextFileContent [accessed Nov 06 2023].