Mobile health interventions – Improving youth health outcomes

A new meta-analysis has been published in JAMA Pediatrics that assesses the use of mobile-phone apps, and improved health outcomes, in children. Up until now, the only systematic review of mHealth intervention effectiveness focused exclusively on childhood obesity. The authors found that overall, smartphones can be extremely useful in not only promoting healthy behaviours such as diet and exercise, but also promoting the uptake of vaccines amongst children. They analysed 37 studies in total, looking at evidence that behaviours were changed in children (defined as 18 years old or younger). As many children now have access to mobile phones the authors wanted to thoroughly examine this modality as a form of education for children, parents and caregivers.

mHealth interventions can reach many people and can contain dynamic health-related data, further to this using certain algorithms these apps can deliver personalised advice at times when a caregiver may not be available. However the authors are keen to highlight that the best results were seen when a caregiver was still involved in the process and given the early stage of mHealth literature, these results must be replicated and furthered to fully examine the extent to which a caregiver should be involved, and what type of professional this is.