Exploring Psychosocial Burdens of Diabetes in Pregnancy and the Feasibility of Technology-Based Support: Qualitative Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Gestational diabetes mellitus and type 2 diabetes mellitus impose psychosocial burdens on pregnant individuals. As there is less evidence about the experience and management of psychosocial burdens of diabetes mellitus during pregnancy, we sought to identify these psychosocial burdens and understand how a novel smartphone app may alleviate them. The app was designed to provide supportive, educational, motivational, and logistical support content, delivered through interactive messages. OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to analyze the qualitative data generated in a feasibility randomized controlled trial of a novel mobile app designed to promote self-management skills, motivate healthy behaviors, and inform low-income pregnant individuals with diabetes. METHODS: Individuals receiving routine clinical care at a single, large academic medical center in Chicago, Illinois were randomized to use of the SweetMama app (n=30) or usual care (n=10) from diagnosis of diabetes until 6 weeks post partum. All individuals completed exit interviews at delivery about their experience of having diabetes during pregnancy. Interviews were guided by a semistructured interview guide and were conducted by a single interviewer extensively trained in empathic, culturally sensitive qualitative interviewing of pregnant and postpartum people. SweetMama users were also queried about their perspectives on the app. Interview data were audio-recorded and professionally transcribed. Data were analyzed by 2 researchers independently using grounded theory constant comparative techniques. RESULTS: Of the 40 participants, the majority had gestational diabetes mellitus (n=25, 63%), publicly funded prenatal care (n=33, 83%), and identified as non-Hispanic Black (n=25, 63%) or Hispanic (n=14, 35%). Participants identified multiple psychosocial burdens, including challenges taking action, negative affectivity regarding diagnosis, diet guilt, difficulties managing other responsibilities, and reluctance to use insulin. External factors, such as taking care of children or navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, affected participant self-perception and motivation to adhere to clinical recommendations. SweetMama participants largely agreed that the use of the app helped mitigate these burdens by enhancing self-efficacy, capitalizing on external motivation, validating efforts, maintaining medical nutrition therapy, extending clinical care, and building a sense of community. Participants expressed that SweetMama supported the goals they established with their clinical team and helped them harness motivating factors for self-care. CONCLUSIONS: Psychosocial burdens of diabetes during pregnancy present challenges with diabetes self-management. Mobile health support may be an effective tool to provide motivation, behavioral cues, and access to educational and social network resources to alleviate psychosocial burdens during pregnancy. Future incorporation of machine learning and language processing models in the app may provide further personalization of recommendations and education for individuals with DM during pregnancy. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03240874; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03240874.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".