497 - Prospective Multimodal Educational Intervention (MEI) to improve caregiver knowledge about High-Risk Infant Follow-up (HRIF) clinic and early developmental milestones in a preterm population.

Poster Number: 497
Publication Number: 497.1084

Background: Developmental delay (DD) among preterm newborns ranges between 28-52%. CDC's “Learn the Signs. Act Early” program in partnership with AAP provides age-specific evidence-informed milestones but there is limited literature on its use in the preterm population. Current technology and universal access to smartphones have allowed us to bridge the literacy barrier through visual/cartoon formats.

Objective: Multimodal educational intervention (MEI) will improve the understanding and recall of the information pertaining to HRIF clinics, two-month, four-month, and six-month milestones among caregivers. We conducted a prospective non-blinded randomized intervention with two arms (video and document). (Figure. 1)

Design/Methods: This study was funded by AAP–SONPM. The initial phase involved the development of original animated videos (English and Spanish). The control group received information in document format about the follow-up clinic and CDC developmental milestones, while the intervention group watched a video (~5 minutes), in their preferred language conveying the same information (Fig 1). For statistical analysis, for association between qualitative variables, the Chi-square test or Fisher’s exact test was used and to compare the quantitative variables between the two Arms, a t-test or Wilcoxon rank sum test was used. Statistical software STATA (version 17) was used for analyses.

Results: A total of 138 caregivers were approached of which 18 declined (13%), to reach our goal of 120 caregivers enrolled in the NICU. There was no significant difference in the demographic distribution between the two arms. For the final analysis, incomplete data was excluded. Within each arm, any intervention (video or documents) significantly improved the baseline knowledge of parents during post-intervention and follow-up visits in regard to HRIF clinics, and two-month and six-month milestones. (Table. 1) In comparing the two intervention methods, there was a consistent trend towards more improvement in the video group compared to the document group, reaching significance for the HRIF clinic information(p=0.04) at follow-up and two-month milestones(p=0.05) compared to pre-intervention. (Table. 2)

Conclusion(s): Our study demonstrates the development of multimodal educational tools, like animated videos or PDF documents improves caregiver knowledge about HRIF clinics and developmental milestones compared to conventional knowledge. In the follow-up part of our project, we demonstrated that information recall was improved when information was provided through animated video format for HRIF clinics and two-month milestones.