Family Attitude Toward Infant Home-Based Care Program Amid COVID-19 Pandemic in Iran: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Infant’s health care management at home was an important challenge for the families. Therefore, the policymakers provided a program as an extension to the care plan to implement at home and examine families’ attitudes toward the program. Examination of the parents’ attitude was a coincidence with COVID-19 pandemic in this study, a descriptive-analytical cross-sectional study that was conducted on 385 parents with infants less than 2 months old in the health centers of Isfahan—Iran. The samples were selected by stratified random sampling method. Data gathering was done through a researcher-made Likert questionnaire, which had 30 items and 3 domains including individual-cultural, educational-supportive, and environmental domains. The data were analyzed through the descriptive and analytical statistic. The results of the study revealed a mean score of 104.12 ± 11.69 on family attitude and their positive view toward the infant home-based care program. Also, the highest score was related to the individual-cultural domain 36.95 ± 4.44, educational-supportive 34.88 ± 5.04 and environmental domains 32.29 ± 3.98, respectively. In addition, a significant relationship was found between the mean score of the family attitude and age, the number of children, education, and place of care ( P < .05). Based on the results of the study, the attitude of family toward infant home-based care is positive, and the challenges of parents in caring their infants at home can be reduced as the program is implemented.