Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic in Breastfeeding Consultations on LactApp, an m-Health Solution for Breastfeeding Support

Abstract

Introduction:Breastfeeding is an unquestionable right of mothers and their children; however, it is not a one-woman job. For breastfeeding to succeed, women must have access to appropriate support and guidance. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent restriction measures and lockdown to reduce community spread of the disease have negatively impacted breastfeeding support from health services and thus, in mothers' breastfeeding experiences.Objective: The present study aims to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on breastfeeding consultations in LactApp (a mobile app for mHealth focused on breastfeeding support, www.lactapp.com) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and Methods: We conducted an observational, descriptive, and retrospective study with LactApp data recorded between July 2018 and March 2021 including 9,151,456 queries classified in 48 topics among 137,327 active users. We used Interrupted time series model to evaluate the increase of number of queries consulted and active users due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Wilcoxon test was used to study the increase of certain topics due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Results: LactApp active users increased by 12,092 users (p-value<0.001) during the COVID-19 outbreak and confinement and queries consulted in LactApp also significantly increased by 10,899 queries per month after the pandemic outbreak. The breastfeeding topics that significantly increased are those related to growth spurts, breastfeeding stages, breastfeeding technique, breast pain and mastitis, problems with infants not gaining weight correctly, hypogalactia, increased milk demand, and relactation. These findings are important to understand the potential of online tools when face-to-face professional support is unavailable.

Breastfeeding and Obstetric Violence during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic in Spain: Maternal Perceptions

“…It should be noted that none of the variables analysed showed statistically significant differences according to maternal diagnosis for SARS-CoV-2, except for effective support with doubts or difficulties, in line with other international studies [ 26 , 27 ]. This scenario was also observed in Spain, and some studies suggest that this lack of support presence was replaced by online tools [ 28 , 29 ]. These aspects also constitute an interesting line of research.…”

Spanish version of the mHealth app usability questionnaire (MAUQ) and adaptation to breastfeeding support apps

“…LactApp is a free mobile application developed to support breastfeeding [17][18][19] . The main functionality of LactApp is to provide personalized answers to breastfeeding consultations through a self-administered questionnaire.…”

What do hospital-based health professionals need and expect from an mHealth app to support the first 1000 days of life? Results from a cross sectional study

“…In this context, the literature shows that parents use digital media to learn about pregnancy [6] and their children's health and development [7]. In addition, the restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic have encouraged the use of mobile health (mHealth) solutions, as they allow to overcome the barriers of traditional health services (e.g., economic barriers, time or space constraints), and women's concerns about being in crowded spaces or waiting where there is an increased risk of becoming infected [8,9]. Telehealth, or technology-enabled health care that includes health and health-related services delivered using digital communication and telecommunications technologies [10,11], has increasingly come to the fore in this context.…”