Mobile Applications to Help Women Achieve Better Behavioral Health in the Postpartum Period

Various theoretical perspectives have informed intervention and program development in postpartum health, including the transtheoretical model, the health belief model, and cognitive and social processes. Mobile technology has been used in recent years to address and promote postpartum health. Mobile technologies utilizing theoretically grounded interventions can be harnessed to improve postpartum behavioral health by decreasing two major barriers to treatment in this population: avoidance of pharmacotherapy and convenient treatment delivery. Specifically, mobile technologies in the postpartum period can tailor messages to user characteristics (e.g. age, number of children, history of depression); link the user with others for increased social support; provide convenient, cost-effective, evidence-based treatment to large populations regardless of location; and provide the ability to send time-sensitive communications to devices. Current interventions for postpartum women include a mobile application for depression that promotes social connectedness and text messaging to promote smoking cessation in perinatal women. Mobile technologies represent a rich medium by which to deliver and facilitate personalized interventions for a variety of health behaviors in postpartum women.