PRENACEL partner - use of short message service (SMS) to encourage male involvement in prenatal care: a cluster randomized trial

BACKGROUND: The partner has an important role when he participates of the prenatal care as showed in the positive results relate to the mother and the child health. For this reason it is an important strategy to bring future fathers closer to health services and to improve their link with paternity. AIM: To evaluate whether the implementation of SMS technology, through the PRENACEL program for the partner as a health education program, is a useful supplement to the standard prenatal monitoring. METHODS: A parallel cluster randomized trial was carried out, with the clusters representing primary care health units. The 20 health units with the largest number of pregnant women in 2013 were selected for the study. There was a balance of the health units according to the size of the affiliated population and the vulnerability situation and these were allocated in intervention and control health units by the randomization. The partners of the pregnant women who started prenatal care prior to the 20th week of gestation were the study population of the intervention group. The participants received periodic short text messages via mobile phone with information about the pregnancy and birth. In the control group units the partners, together with the women, received the standard prenatal care. RESULTS: One hundred eighty-six partners were interviewed, 62 from the PRENACEL group, 73 from the intervention group that did not opt ​​for PRENACEL and 51 from the control group. A profile with a mean age of 30 years was found and the majority of respondents (51.3%) declared themselves as brown race/color. The interviewees presented a mean of 9.3 years of study. The majority of the men (95.2%) cohabited with their partner and 63.7% were classified as socioeconomic class C. The adherence to the PRENACEL program was 53.4%. In relation to the individual results, there was a greater participation of the PRENACEL partners in the prenatal consultations, as well as a greater presence of them accompanying the woman at the moment of the childbirth when compared to the other groups. CONCLUSION: The study showed that a health education strategy using communication technology seems to be a useful prenatal care supplement; the intervention had a good acceptability and has a promising role in men’s involvement in prenatal, labour and postpartum care of their partners. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinical trial registry: RBR-54zf73, U1111–1163-7761.