Effectiveness of the Essential Coaching Postpartum Digital Health Solution on Parenting Self-Efficacy, Mental Health, Well-Being, and Parenting Outcomes: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial (Preprint)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND The transition to parenthood requires adjustments to new norms and expectations. While there is significant focus on the parenting transition for birthing parents (persons with a uterus), nonbirthing parents (parents who do not give birth, including fathers, gender-diverse parents, adoptive parents, or nongestational coparents) are less supported. Preventive education via SMS text messaging can fill a health service gap and provide timely, standardized, evidence-based information. The Essential Coaching Postpartum program includes 6 weeks of evidence-based daily SMS text messages on topics such as infant care, normal development, parental mental health, and self-care, with streams designed for birthing parents (Essential Coaching for Every Mother) and nonbirthing parents (Essential Coaching for Every Partner). OBJECTIVE The primary objective of this study is to compare the effectiveness of Essential Coaching Postpartum to standard care on parenting self-efficacy, mental health (ie, depression, anxiety, and stress), well-being (ie, general distress and sleep), and parenting outcomes (ie, relationship satisfaction and coparenting) among first-time nonbirthing parents in Nova Scotia, Canada. The secondary objective is to compare the effectiveness of Essential Coaching Postpartum to standard care among first-time birthing parents in Nova Scotia. The exploratory objective is to compare the effectiveness of Essential Coaching Postpartum to standard care among first-time parent dyads (ie, both birthing parent and nonbirthing parent) in Nova Scotia. METHODS This will be a randomized controlled trial. A total of 166 first-time birthing parents and 166 first-time nonbirthing parents from Nova Scotia will be recruited and randomly assigned to the intervention or control arm. The intervention arm will receive standard care plus the Essential Coaching Postpartum digital health solution, which consists of twice-daily SMS text messages in the first 3 weeks and daily messages in the next 3 weeks. The control group will receive standard care. Messages are personalized based on the infant’s age and the parent’s self-selected feeding preference (ie, breast or chest feeding, formula feeding, or combination feeding). The first message is sent on the second evening after birth, with parents being eligible to enroll up to 7 days post partum. Participants will complete questionnaires assessing parenting self-efficacy, mental health, well-being, and parenting outcomes at baseline (enrollment after birth), 6 weeks post partum (after the intervention), and 6 months post partum (follow-up). RESULTS Recruitment for this study started in June 2025 and is currently ongoing. As of September 15, 2025, 11 birthing and 5 nonbirthing parents have been recruited. CONCLUSIONS We anticipate that providing parents with SMS text messages (ie, Essential Coaching Postpartum) during the 6-week postpartum period to complement standard care will improve parenting self-efficacy, mental health, well-being, and parenting outcomes. CLINICALTRIAL ClincalTrials.gov NCT06996067; https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06996067 INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT PRR1-10.2196/78209
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.024 | 0.025 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.012 | 0.008 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.009 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.097 | 0.013 |
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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".