Mobile Phone SMS Messages and Automated Calls in Improving Vaccine Coverage Among Children in Pakistan

Aga Khan University

Status: Unknown

Conditions: Haemophilus Influenzae Type b Infection; Tuberculosis; Diphtheria; Polio; Hepatitis B; Tetanus; Pertussis; Pneumococcal Infection

Treatments: Behavioral: SMS messages and automated calls

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03341195

4320-Ped_ERC-16

Details and patient eligibility

About

Routine childhood immunization (RCI) in Pakistan is well below the recommended coverage of 90% with rates as low as 16% in certain regions (Pakistan DHS 2012-3). This has led to continued polio transmission, large measles outbreaks and thousands of deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases (Kazi.Bull WHO 2016). Mobile phone communication is widespread in developing countries and has proven a potential method of directly connecting pregnant women and mothers to health services (Kharbanda. Expert Review of Vaccine 2014). The investigators propose conducting a mixed methods proof of concept cluster randomized trial (CRT) to assess the effectiveness of different types of SMS messaging and automated calls to improve RCI and understand the perceptions and barriers that may affect SMS and automated call-based interventions at participants levels. the investigators will conduct the study at urban and rural sites in Pakistan. The investigators will examine an important public health question - do low cost, automated SMS, and automated messages improve RCI coverage in resource-constrained settings? Further, investigators will compare the effectiveness of reminder, educational and interactive text messages for improving RCI and will generate socio-cultural data regarding the impact of participants health beliefs that will be important for setting up the appropriate interventions in other LMICs.

Full description

SMS text messages have shown to be effective for mobile health or mHealth having a considerable impact on disease prevention efforts in developing countries. Mobile phone and SMS texting provide an excellent solution to challenges like travel and complex intercultural contact. SMS based interventions have been quite effective in different programs, particularly in treatment adherence, smoke cessation, health care appointment attendance, antenatal care attendance and compliance with immunization. In addition adding incentives to SMS messages have shown a positive association, however, there is a cost implication for scaling up this model at a country level. Given the mobile phone access and acceptability in the LMIC, there is great potential for SMS based intervention to improve Immunization coverage in LMIC setup.

One major reservation for SMS based interventions is the level of literacy. However, there has been mixed input related to the preference of phones calls as compared to text messages in populations of low literacy and resource-constrained settings. Mobile phone text messages in local languages, pictorial messages and in combination with a phone call can further reduce this gap.

Most of the studies evaluating the impact of text messages on vaccination have been conducted in the United States with a major focus on flu vaccine among children and teenagers. The participants covered in these studies are from low income background at an academic medical center and is quite different from resource constraint settings of LMICs due to poor immunization registries and electronic records. There is limited data from LMICs set up on the role of SMS based interventions for improvement of RI coverage and conventional one-way reminder text messages were used by most of the studies as the intervention. Overall very few investigators compared reminders, educational and interactive SMS messages related to childhood vaccination uptake. Although some of the investigators have shown some behavior change for improvement in vaccination coverage, more rigorous application of health behavior change model needs to be applied to understand the impact of reminder, educational and interactive messages on behavior change related to improvement in RI coverage. Very few studies have compared the effect of educational, reminders and interactive messages in improving uptake and on-time routine immunization.

In this study the investigators would like to examine an important public health question - do low cost, automated SMS messages and calls improve RI coverage among participants in resource-constrained settings? In this study, we would like to compare the effectiveness of reminder, educational and interactive text messages and phone calls for improving RI uptake in Pakistani participants.

Enrollment: 3,850 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 1 to 14 days old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• The inclusion criteria includes being a child from the HDSS site, being less than 14 days of age with parent/guardian or at least one person in the household having a working mobile phone connection and parent/guardian providing consent to participate in the study.

Exclusion criteria

• The exclusion criteria includes a child from outside HDSS area or family plans to stay in the catchment area for less than 20 weeks

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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3,850 participants in 5 patient groups

1. One way SMS messages.

Active Comparator group

Description:

Parents/caregiver will receive one way educational/reminder/proactive SMS messages related to routine immunization once a week till 20 weeks of age.

Treatment:

Behavioral: SMS messages and automated calls

2. Two Way SMS messages

Active Comparator group

Description:

Parents/caregiver will receive two way (interactive) educational/reminder/proactive SMS messages related to routine immunization once a week till 20 weeks of age-parents will have the option to reply and receive more information related to immunization through text messages.

Treatment:

Behavioral: SMS messages and automated calls

3. One way automated calls.

Active Comparator group

Description:

Parents/caregiver will receive one way educational/reminder/proactive automated phone call related to routine immunization once a week till 20 weeks of age.

Treatment:

Behavioral: SMS messages and automated calls

4.Two way interactive automated calls

Active Comparator group

Description:

Parents/caregiver will receive two way (interactive) educational/reminder/proactive automated phone call related to routine immunization once a week till 20 weeks of age-parents will have the option to reply and receive more information related to immunization through phone call.

Treatment:

Behavioral: SMS messages and automated calls

5. Control Arm

No Intervention group

Description:

One time counseling at the baseline survey.