Educating women about congenital cytomegalovirus: assessment of health education materials through a web-based survey

BMC Women's Health

Research Article

Christina L Kilgo¹  Denise M Levis²  Michael J Cannon²  Simani M Price³  Erika Bonilla³  Paul Zador³ 

[1] Carter Consulting, Inc., 2310 Parklake Drive NE, Suite 535, 30345, Atlanta, GA, USA;National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1600 Clifton Road, Mailstop E-86, 30333, Atlanta, GA, USA;Westat, Inc., 1600 Research Blvd., 20850, Rockville, MD, USA;

关键词: Cytomegalovirus;    Congenital;    Health education materials;    Web-based survey;    Prevention guidelines;    Pregnant women;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12905-014-0144-3

 received in 2014-08-05, accepted in 2014-11-10,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundCongenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) is the most common congenital infection in the U.S. and can result in permanent disabilities, such as hearing and vision loss, intellectual disability, and psychomotor and language impairments. Women can adopt prevention behaviors in an attempt to reduce their exposure to CMV. Currently, few women are familiar with CMV. To increase awareness of CMV, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) developed draft health education materials. The purpose of this study was to pilot test two health education materials to gauge their appeal and to determine if they increase knowledge about CMV and motivate audiences to seek additional information on CMV and adopt CMV prevention behaviors.MethodsAfrican-American (n = 404) and Caucasian women (n = 405), who had a young child and were either pregnant or planning a pregnancy, were recruited to participate in a 15-minute web survey. Participants were randomly assigned to view one of two CMV health education materials, either a factsheet or video. Pre and post survey measures were used to assess changes in knowledge of CMV and motivation to adopt prevention behaviors. We also examined audience preferences regarding materials and motivation.ResultsCMV knowledge score increased significantly after presentation of either the video or factsheet (from 3.7 out of 10 to 9.1 out of 10, p <0.001). The average materials appeal score was high, with a mean of 3.6 on a four-point scale, indicating women responded very positively to both materials. Regression analyses indicated that appeal, message involvement (e.g., information seeking, discussing with others), post materials knowledge score, and viewing the video (vs. factsheet) were significantly positively associated with increased support for CMV prevention behaviors.ConclusionsOverall, we found that the health education materials improved women’s knowledge of CMV and encouraged them to adopt prevention behaviors. Given the low awareness levels among women currently, these findings suggest that appropriate education materials have the potential to greatly increase knowledge of CMV.As women become more knowledgeable about CMV and transmission routes, we expect they will be more likely to adopt prevention behaviors, thereby reducing their risk of CMV infection.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Price et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.