The effect of a health literacy approach to counselling on the lifestyle of women with gestational diabetes: A clinical trial

Abstract

Background: Gestational diabetes is a common pregnancy disorder that affects the mother’s and neonate’s health. The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of a health literacy approach to counselling on the lifestyle of women with gestational diabetes. The present randomized controlled clinical trial was conducted in 2017 using a parallel design. The subjects included 84 eligible women presenting to Alborz and Kamali Hospitals, Karaj, Iran. Methods: Convenience sampling was first used to select the subjects. They were then assigned to an intervention or control group based on randomized blocks of four. Both groups attended counselling sessions. The mothers in the intervention group attended six sessions of counselling with a health literacy approach in addition to counselling on routine pregnancy care. The control group attended counselling sessions on safe pregnancy care and received a training package containing all the subjects discussed in the intervention group. The Lifestyle Questionnaire and the Iranian Health Literacy Questionnaire were completed by the mothers at the beginning and at the end of the sessions as well as three weeks after the sessions. The data obtained were analyzed in SPSS-19. Results: According to the study findings, the scores of lifestyle (P=0.8) and health literacy (P=0.423) showed no significant differences between the intervention and control groups before the intervention. Significant differences were, however, observed in the mean scores of lifestyle and health literacy between the two groups immediately and three weeks after the intervention. Comparing the means showed a higher increase in the mean scores in the intervention group (P<0.001). Conclusions: Providing counselling services by midwives can significantly help modify mothers’ unhealthy lifestyle choices and increase their health literacy; therefore, reducing maternal and neonatal consequences, especially in high-risk pregnancies. Trial registration number: IRCT2017021427728N3 Trial registry: Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials Trial registration date: 5th April 2017

Establishing the efficacy of interventions to improve health literacy and health behaviours: a systematic review

“…The remaining four were quasi-experimental pre-post controlled trials [33,35,42,48]. Studies took place in nine countries -USA [30,31,37,39,40,42,43,45], Australia [35,51,52], Iran [32,34,47], China [41,44], Japan [36,49], Taiwan [48], Niger [38], Germany [50] and Demark [33].…”

“…Two studies focused on the domain of disease prevention (cancer screening [39] and malaria health literacy [38]), eight focused on healthcare (diabetes [30,37], gestational diabetes [32], breast cancer [36], cardiac conditions [33,34], one or more chronic conditions [35] and people taking two or more medications daily [31]). The remaining 12 studies focused on health promotion with eight focusing on general health promotion [41,42,44,45,48,[50][51][52], two focusing on nutrition [40,43], one on nutrition and physical activity [49] and one on smoking prevention [47].…”

“…The studies included 10,997 participants. Six studies focused exclusively on women [32,36,39,40,43,48], the remaining 16 included both genders. One study did not provide a gender split [41] but the remaining 15 studies had an average of 55.6% female participants (range 2.98-81.7%).…”

Health literacy for people-centred care

“…Mothers in the intervention group participated in 6 HL sessions together with counselling on routine pregnancy care, while the control group received only general counselling and a training package. This trial showed significant differences in mean scores of lifestyle behaviours and health literacy after the intervention between intervention and control groups (Gharachourlo et al, 2018).…”

Pregnant Women's Health Literacy Promotion Strategies: A Review

“…Gharachourlo et al (2018) [29] 84 Counselling Questionnaire Research findings showed that counselling by midwives can improve MHL.…”