Community Health Workers and mHealth: adoption of strategies for the prevention of cervical cancer in Argentina

Abstract

Introduction: the ATICA strategy was a multicomponent mHealth intervention based on sending SMS messages to HPV+ women to promote triage cytology. After 60 days, an email and a SMS message were also sent to the Community Health Worker (CHW) to visit women who had not attended triage. Aim: to analyze the perceptions of CHWs about barriers and facilitators of the implementation of the multicomponent intervention and their intention to adopt it.Methods: we evaluated the implementation of the intervention using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) and RE-AIM framework. CHWs were asked to complete an anonymous, self-administered survey to evaluate their intention to adopt the intervention and to identify barriers and facilitators. We measured the association between intention to adopt the ATICA strategy and CFIR constructs. We used IBM SPSS software to calculate the chi-square and evaluate associations.Results: of the 221 CHWs in the ATICA study, 197 completed the survey. 78,3 % of them would adopt the strategy in their work without differences between sociodemographic profiles or according to familiarity with phone use. The intention to adopt ATICA was higher among those who perceived it as a relative advantage (81 % vs. 62,5 %; p=0,04) and among those who found it easy to register phone numbers (81,8 % vs. 64,3 %; p=0,04). 98,3 % stated that strategies were needed to expand triage coverage in the province.Conclusion: the high intention to adopt the ATICA strategy among CHWs will contribute to the future scaling-up of the intervention