Our research team has been using the PRECEDE-PROCEED model [1, 2] to guide the design and development of MommaConnect, a patient-centered digital healthcare platform that can be accessed on a variety of electronic devices (e.g., smartphone, tablet, computer) to facilitate remote delivery of psychotherapy and psychoeducation by clinicians to women experiencing postpartum depression (PPD). The eight-step PRECEDE-PROCEED model is a comprehensive, participatory, and ecological model that has guided healthcare intervention design and development for health conditions for the past 30 years [1, 2]. The purpose of this paper is to review the PRECEDE-PROCEED model and illustrate how the model has guided the planning and development of MommaConnect to treat PPD and improve mother-infant interaction.

PPD affects approximately one in eight women, with rates doubled among women identifying as low-income, and is known to have numerous adverse effects on maternal functioning and infant well-being [3]. Without treatment, women with PPD are at significant risk for chronic and treatment-resistant depression, poor maternal functioning, adverse family functioning, and suicide [4–8]. PPD also increases the risk for impaired mother-infant interaction, reduced maternal attention to infant safety, decreased breastfeeding, and poor infant developmental outcomes [4–8]. Specifically, infants of mothers who experience PPD are at significant risk for poor long-term cognitive, emotional, and neurobehavioral development [9–11] because of the mothers’ impaired ability to respond sensitively and contingently to their infants [10–15]. Compared to mothers without PPD, mothers with depression may be less affectionate and less engaged with their infants or overly intrusive and less responsive to their infants’ engagement and disengagement cues [16–18]. In the long term, these maternal behaviors are associated with impaired child development (e.g., cognitive, socioemotional) as well as child psychiatric disturbance, including conduct, anxiety, depression, and substance use disorders with a prevalence exceeding 40% [16].

Despite growing treatment options, most women with PPD face significant barriers to receiving care. Only 12–37% of women with PPD bring their depressive symptoms to professional attention and receive treatment in the postpartum period [8–11, 19]. Barriers to treatment may include lack of awareness of signs and symptoms of PPD, stigma surrounding mental illness, fears of having children removed from the home, competing childcare and work responsibilities, and limited geographic accessibility to treatment, including poor access in rural areas. Further, with 3.8 million births per year in the USA [20], there is essentially one intensive outpatient perinatal treatment program per 21,000 women with PPD, further complicating access to quality and specialized care. Only 13 states provide such intensive services, and only three programs specifically address the needs of women with low-incomes and their infants. These women may face even greater challenges to PPD care, including inadequate healthcare coverage, lack of transportation to and from appointments, and living in “medical deserts” with few behavioral healthcare providers who accept Medicaid. Remote treatment options, including telehealth and mobile applications tailored to PPD treatment and improving maternal-infant interaction, may offer reasonable solutions for women who experience poor access to specialized care to prevent and treat adverse maternal and child outcomes.

Our research team is co-creating the MommaConnect digital healthcare platform accessible by smartphones, tablets including iPads, and computers for women across the socioeconomic spectrum and their clinicians to increase treatment access by reducing barriers to PPD treatment. Smartphone ownership, the basis of the patient-facing app of the MommaConnect digital healthcare platform, has increased across all income categories in the USA, including a 71% increase among women with incomes less than $30,000 per year and an 85% increase among those with incomes in the $30,000–$99,999 range [21]. Multiple meta-analyses showed mobile health (mHealth) interventions to be efficacious in delivering treatment to the target population [22–24]. Furthermore, mHealth apps built with offline and online capabilities can be leveraged to address broadband and data access issues and promote access to digital education and care [25–27]. MommaConnect is designed with these features to address potential access challenges for women, including those with low socioeconomic status and those with limited geographic accessibility, such as those living in rural areas.

Tailoring a patient-centered digital healthcare platform such as MommaConnect to facilitate remote psychotherapy delivery is intended to help clinicians engage mothers with PPD via a variety of digital devices, address impaired mother-infant interaction at the point of care, and facilitate shared decision-making between clinician and patient. Further, MommaConnect is intended to advance the quality of care, mitigate barriers to treatment access, improve patient experiences, improve maternal-infant mental health outcomes, and capture patient-generated data to guide therapeutic decisions for women who are experiencing PPD and their infants. For example, daily mood monitoring, a feature of MommaConnect, will provide ongoing self-evaluation data for clinicians to gauge trends toward improvement or increasing symptom severity, and take action as indicated.

Guided by the PRECEDE-PROCEED model (Figure 1), we conducted formative research to begin relevant social, epidemiological, behavioral, environmental, educational, and ecological assessments consistent with steps 1–4 (Figures 2 and 3).

We incorporated the findings from our MBC program in steps 1–4 as well as relevant literature to inform these assessments. In addition, we assembled a community advisory board (CAB) of former MBC patients, who had experienced PPD, and perinatal mental health clinicians to conduct focus groups and in-depth interviews, respectively. These activities informed the preliminary design using personas, storyboards, journey maps of the users’ experiences, and interactive wireframes, as best practices in digital healthcare platform development. During the focus groups and interviews, we presented the design of content and app features to allow mothers with PPD and clinicians to interact with the MommaConnect digital healthcare platform. The total mean scores based on the System Usability Scale [35, 36] were 80 on the first round and 91 on the second. These scores are considered excellent in terms of usability, suggesting ease of use among both mothers and clinicians on the MommaConnect design and features. A score of 80.3 is equivalent to getting an A (the top 10% of scores) [37]. This is also the point where users are more likely to recommend the product to a friend.

During the focus groups, we also elicited the perspectives of mothers in the CAB regarding mental health treatment access, social determinants of health and health inequities that impact treatment, and how best to address their concerns. Specifically, we asked mothers about their current knowledge of PPD, experience of social determinants of health and health inequities, and barriers to the use of MommaConnect. To gain deeper insights into the challenges of delivering mental health services and addressing PPD from the clinicians’ perspectives, we collected qualitative data on their professional experiences to identify potential barriers to MommaConnect adoption.

As a result of focus group iterations exploring barriers and initial low-fidelity wireframes (Figure 4), we gathered essential feedback on challenges related to steps 2 and 3 of the model. For example, during our focus group, mothers mentioned they “did not know” they were experiencing depression or what depression entailed. In response, we created a micro-learning video as part of the app to provide information on recognizing depression and incorporated screeners to help identify symptoms. Additionally, mothers in the focus groups expressed a desire to retain information from the MBC in-person program, which was previously provided with paper “homework sheets” during individual sessions. Consequently, we designed the digital health platform to include access to prior therapy sessions that have been completed, as well as the ability to mark items for future reference. Other features validated by participants with a review of the low-fidelity wireframes include the ability to search for providers, conduct therapy sessions via Zoom-like sessions, and track moods. The current design and development of the MommaConnect platform include a comprehensive digital healthcare platform that provides a dashboard for mothers to complete the intake process, participate in sessions, and create their profiles. The platform also provides a clinician-facing portal to support virtual therapy sessions. A sample of some of the screens from the MommaConnect digital healthcare platform for mothers with PPD is provided in Figure 4.

Findings from focus groups with mothers and clinicians informed the research team of barriers and challenges to attending in-person therapy that will inform future work. Challenges included commuting to the MBC program or other treatment, symptom severity, and hectic home life. In addition, findings from the mothers’ focus groups and clinicians’ in-depth interviews also informed the research team about the desired features of our digital healthcare platform (Table 3).

Based on the findings from the focus groups and in-depth interviews, we developed preliminary culturally congruent MommaConnect content including PPD symptom assessment, information about PPD, psychotherapy content to address PPD symptoms, and Mother-Baby Interaction psychotherapy content to address deficits in the mother-infant relationship.

The research team also used Agile methodology [38] to develop MommaConnect iteratively using 4-week development cycles (i.e., sprints) to refine the platform for use on both Android and iOS mobile devices. MommaConnect uses the latest cross-platform technology, including ReactJS, MongoDB, and other technologies, to provide a robust platform with features such as video training, depression tracking, mother-infant attachment tracking, a dashboard, and communication tools between mothers and clinicians. At this point in our research, we are poised to evaluate the feasibility of MommaConnect through implementation including patient outcomes and process, impact, and outcome evaluation in Steps 5–8 of the PRECEDE-PROCEED model. Specifically, we will measure changes in depression with the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale [39] and maternal-infant attachment with the Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale [40] and assess system usability with the System Usability Scale [35, 36]. We hypothesize that the use of MommaConnect will reduce depression by 10 points, increase maternal-infant attachment by 6 points, and that system usability will be above 80 points. Future work also includes conducting a full-scale RCT to test efficacy and assessment of cost effectiveness and commercialization potential.

Despite growing treatment options, only 12–37% of women with PPD receive treatment, and many face significant barriers to treatment access, such as social determinants of health and health inequities [8–11, 19]. Remote treatment options, such as the MommaConnect digital healthcare platform, offer access for women across socio-economic strata who might not otherwise receive treatment. Without treatment, risks are high for poor maternal-child outcomes among women with PPD and their infants.

The PRECEDE-PROCEED model has been instrumental as a theoretical framework to guide the planning and iterative development of the MommaConnect digital healthcare platform by providing methods to identify social, epidemiological, behavioral, educational, ecological, organizational, and environmental barriers to implementation from women experiencing PPD. After completion of the assessment steps, PRECEDE-PROCEED will continue to guide the implementation and evaluation of MommaConnect that reflect the needs of women with PPD and their infants, and the preferences of the clinicians that provide perinatal mental health services. The next steps will involve additional feasibility testing, efficacy testing, and appraisal of cost-effectiveness and commercialization potential. The PRECEDE-PROCEED model provided a framework for a collection of preliminary evidence that suggests that MommaConnect holds promise to provide effective and culturally congruent delivery of maternal mental health services for women with PPD and their infants. Additionally, preliminary results suggest that MommaConnect has the potential to increase access to specialized PPD treatment, even for those in “medical deserts” and rural areas. In conclusion, based on our experience, we recommend the PRECEDE-PROCEED model as a comprehensive planning and theoretical framework for the development of other behavioral health interventions.