ArticleDigital health
Using WhatsApp support groups to promote responsive caregiving, caregiver mental health and child development in the COVID-19 era: A randomised controlled trial of a fully digital parenting intervention.
Article in Digital health. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Strengthening Early Childhood Development Programs and Interventions in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Systematic Review of Interventions.Maternal & child nutrition · 2026Pooled it
- Universal digital mental health interventions for children and youth: a scoping review.Frontiers in digital health · 2025Pooled it
- Using Group Chats to Drive Behavior Change in Digital Health Interventions: Scoping Review and Realist Synthesis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Using a Digital Parenting Intervention to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence and Promote Gender Equitable Behaviors in South Africa and Jamaica: A Qualitative Study Exploring Partnered Parents' Experiences of ParentText.Violence against women · 2026Article
- Human-Centered Design of a Contextualized Service Delivery Model for Families of Infants With Major Congenital Anomalies in Kenya.Birth defects research · 2026Article
- Evaluation of a multicomponent child development intervention delivered through the government health system: a feasibility study.BMJ global health · 2025Observational
- WhatsApp as a tool for psychiatric crisis management: lessons from a Ghanaian support group.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- A Low-Cost, Social Media-Supported Intervention for Caregivers to Enhance Toddlers' Language Learning: Mixed Methods Feasibility and Acceptability Study.JMIR pediatrics and parenting · 2025Article
- Digital Parenting Program: Enhancing Parenting and Reducing Child Behavior Problems.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- "Like Someone Is Paying Attention to You, Listening to You, and Guiding You": Acceptability of a Mental Health Chatbot Among Caregivers of Adolescents Living With HIV.Journal of the International Association of Providers of AIDS CareArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: Digital interventions hold important potential for supporting parents when face-to-face interventions are unavailable. We assessed the feasibility and effectiveness of a digital parenting intervention in Zambia and Tanzania. Methods: Using a randomised controlled trial, we evaluated the Sharing Stories digital parenting intervention for caregivers of children aged 9-32 months with access to a smartphone in their household. Caregivers were stratified based on child age and randomly assigned to the intervention or waitlist control arm. The intervention was delivered via facilitated WhatsApp groups over 6 weeks to promote caregiver wellbeing and responsive caregiving through shared reading activities. Primary outcomes were caregiver-reported responsive caregiving, child language and socio-emotional development. Secondary outcomes were caregiver mental health and parental stress. Masked assessors conducted assessments at baseline and immediate follow-up. Results: Between October 2020 and March 2021, we randomly assigned 494 caregiver-child dyads to the intervention ( Conclusions: Digital parenting interventions using WhatsApp can effectively promote responsive caregiving and caregiver mental health in low-resource settings, with great potential for scalability. Trial registration: ISRCTN database, ISRCTN77689525.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.