(PS4-B50) Connecting Mothers in Voluntary Programs to Promote Child Wellbeing to Reproductive Healthcare

Friday, November 17, 2023

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM PST

Location: Regency Ballroom, Level 7

Author(s)

Grace S. Hubel, Ph.D.

Associate Professor
Department of Psychology, College of Charleston
Charleston, South Carolina

Co-Author(s)

Nada M. Goodrum, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina
Bett F. Williams, None

Chief Communications Officer
Children's Trust of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina

A foundation of population health and wellbeing is nurturing, mutually responsive relationships between children and caregivers. Promoting these relationships requires a coordinated system of interventions with a two-generation approach. Whereas children are often the focus in these interventions, their caregiver’s instrumental role can be diminished by stressors, health issues, and other problems. Two-generation approaches should consider maternal reproductive health. Problems caused by poor health and stress during pregnancy, such as preterm births, are threats to child well-being and risk factors for adversity. Further, there is evidence that health services that assist mothers in fertility planning can lead to reduction in child maltreatment and adversity. An important part of supporting maternal health is communicating to mothers about the availability and benefits of existing community services.

This presentation will share findings from a study that aimed to determine how to tailor messages about reproductive health to mothers exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and who experience parenting stress. We surveyed 481 mothers living in South Carolina who were served by programs overseen by the state’s Children’s Trust, which funds preventative interventions for parents and children. The survey assessed an expanded concept of ACEs, current parenting stress, and regulatory focus. Regulatory focus is defined by the type of goals individuals are driven to pursue and appears to be an important factor in health messaging. Individuals tend to fall into two categories of regulatory focus: prevention (driven to avoid losses and failures) or promotion (driven to achieve success). After completing survey measures, mothers viewed ads for reproductive health services and were asked to rate how likely they would be to use the advertised service. The six ads were varied as follows. Ad 1: prevention regulatory focus frame, ad 2: promotion regulatory focus frame, ad 3: services delivered in-person at a local clinic, ad 4: telehealth services, ad 5: services that did not address partner relations, ad 6: services that addressed partner relations.

Analytic techniques were linear mixed models to examine how exposure to adversity and parenting stress played a role in ad persuasiveness. The mothers exposed to a high number of ACEs were overall more likely to say they would use all the advertised services. Unexpectedly, whereas those exposed to a higher number of ACEs were more likely to describe their regulatory style as prevention focused, those in the high ACEs group did not seem to prefer the prevention regulatory focus framed ad. Mothers who described low levels of parenting stress were the only subgroup examined who seemed to prefer telehealth services over in-person services. Overall, the ad for maternal health services that addressed partner relations was more persuasive than the ad that did not address partner relations. This was especially true among the group of women who reported a high level of parenting stress. The presentation will discuss implications for improving connections for families between the variety of community services available for preventing child adversity and promoting family wellbeing.