Assessing the effectiveness of an app-based child unintentional injury prevention intervention for caregivers of rural Chinese preschoolers: protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Compared to urban children, children living in rural areas of most countries, including China, are at higher risk of suffering unintentional injuries. Most proven injury prevention interventions, however, are rarely implemented in rural China due to lack of resources. Mobile health interventions are low-cost and easy-to-implement, facilitating implementing injury prevention in resource-limited areas (e.g., rural areas). This study is designed and implemented to examine the effectiveness of an app-based intervention for unintentional injury prevention among rural preschoolers in China. METHODS: A single-blind, 18-month, parallel-group cluster randomized controlled trial with 1:1 allocation ratio will be implemented in 2 rural areas of China (Yang County, Shaanxi Province, and Shicheng County, Jiangxi Province). In total, at least 3508 rural caregivers of preschoolers aged 3–6 years old who own a smartphone will be recruited from 24 preschools. Clusters will be randomized at the preschool level and allocated to the control group (receiving routine school-based education plus app-based parenting education excluding unintentional injury prevention) or the intervention group (receiving routine school-based education plus app-based parenting education including unintentional injury prevention). External support strategies will be adopted by local partners to minimize user fatigue, non-compliance, and attrition. Data collection will be conducted at baseline and then every 3 months during the 18-month follow-up time period. Intention-to-treat data analysis will be implemented. Missing values will be imputed by using the Expectation Maximization algorithm. Generalized estimating equation will test the overall effectiveness of the app-based intervention. A per-protocol sensitivity analysis will be conducted to test the robustness of results. Subgroup analyses will follow the strategies for primary analyses. The primary outcome measure is the incidence rate of unintentional injury among preschoolers during the study period. Secondary outcome measures comprise longitudinal changes in caregiver’s attitudes, caregiver-reported supervision behaviors, and caregiver-assessed home environment safety surrounding child unintentional injury prevention in the last week using a standardized audit instrument. DISCUSSION: The app-based intervention is expected to be feasible and effective over the 18-month intervention period. If the app is demonstrated effective as hypothesized, we will initiate processes to generalize and popularize it broadly to rural child caregivers across China. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ChiCTR2000037606, registered on August 29, 2020.