NCT04101565

Text4Father Pilot Feasibility, Acceptability Study

Feasibility, Acceptability, & Preliminary Efficacy of Text4Father for Improving Infant & Family Health

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 120 (actual)
• Sponsor: Johns Hopkins University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

This study evaluates the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of Text4Father among first-time lower income fathers. Half of the participants will receive Text4Father - a text messaging educational program - from mid-pregnancy through 2 months of postnatal age, while the other half will receive usual care.

Detailed description

Text4Father, a multi-modal text messaging program, is designed to increase first-time lower income fathers' knowledge, self-efficacy, and behavioral engagement on infant care and parenting. Text4Father consists of 48-weeks of twice weekly texts written at a 5th grade reading level. Texts include resource links and instructions to support behavior change (e.g., videos, infographics), starting mid-pregnancy and continuing through 2 months of postnatal age. Text content was developed using formative research and feedback from the target population, consensus building with experts, and an evidence-based review. Usual maternity care does not involve expectant fathers in education. Further, while father engagement is widely advocated, few public health and clinical approaches aim to engage expectant fathers during the prenatal period and first months after birth - a critical window of opportunity that has been insufficiently leveraged to promote father engagement when fathers describe being unsure of father role.

Conditions

• Fathers
• Mhealth
• Mobile Health
• Nuclear Family

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Text4Father	Receipt of twice-weekly texts that include resource links and instructions to support behavior change (e.g., videos, infographics) and start mid-pregnancy and continuing through 2 months of age.

Timeline

• Start date: 2019-12-26
• Primary completion: 2024-05-14
• Completion: 2024-05-31
• First posted: 2019-09-24
• Last updated: 2025-05-04
• Results posted: 2025-05-04

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States