Consumer health-related needs of pregnant women and their caregivers.

OBJECTIVES: To build effective applications, technology designers must understand consumer health needs. Pregnancy is a common health condition, and expectant families have unanswered questions. This study examined consumer health-related needs in pregnant women and caregivers and determined the types of needs that were not met. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We enrolled pregnant women <36 weeks' gestational age and caregivers from advanced maternal-fetal and group prenatal care settings. Participant characteristics were collected through surveys, and health-related needs were elicited in semi-structured interviews. Researchers categorized needs by semantic type and whether they were met (ie, met, partially met, or unmet). Inter-rater reliability was measured by Cohen's kappa. RESULTS: Seventy-one pregnant women and 29 caregivers participated and reported 1054 needs, 28% unmet, and 49% partially met. Need types were 66.2% informational, 15.9% logistical, 8.9% social, 8.6% medical, and 0.3% other. Inter-rater reliability was near perfect (κ=0.95, P < 0.001). DISCUSSION: Common topics of unmet needs were prognosis, life management, and need for emotional support. For pregnant women, these unmet needs focused around being healthy, childbirth, infant care, and being a good mother; caregivers' needs involved caring for the mother, the natural course of pregnancy, and life after pregnancy. CONCLUSION: Pregnant women and caregivers have a rich set of health-related needs with many not fully met. Caregivers' needs differed from those of pregnant women and may not be adequately addressed by resources designed for mothers. Many unmet needs involved stress and life management. Knowledge about consumer health needs can inform the design of better technologies for pregnancy.

Use of the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control to Predict Information-Seeking Behaviors and Health-Related Needs in Pregnant Women and Caregivers.

Pregnancy produces important health-related needs, and expectant families have turned to technologies to meet them. The ability to predict needs and technology preferences might aid in connecting families with resources. This study examined the relationships among Multidimensional Health Locus of Control (MHLC) scores, information-seeking behaviors, and health-related needs in 71 pregnant women and 29 caregivers. Internal MHLC scores were positively correlated with information-seeking behaviors, including website and patient portal use. Higher Chance scores were associated with decreased portal or pregnancy website use (p=0.002), with the exception of FitPregnancy.com (p=0.02). MHLC scores were not significantly correlated with number of health-related needs or whether needs were met. Individuals with needs about disease management had higher Powerful Others scores (p=0.01); those with questions about tests had lower Powerful Others scores (p=0.008). MHLC scores might be used to identify individuals less likely to seek information and to predict need types.