Using Technology to Conduct LTSAE Outreach at Georgia WIC Clinics

Rosa I. Arriaga, PhD, Principal Investigator, Georgia Institute of Technology.  Technology for monitoring early childhood developmental milestones and its adoption among low-income mothers of young children had not been evaluated. The project is aimed at understanding the utilization of technology among WIC participants, with the goal of discovering which interface might be most useful for the task of tracking developmental milestones. The project also involves implementing and testing the Learn the Signs Act Early milestones mobile app, developed by Georgia Tech, as well as free-standing kiosks in WIC clinics.

Update, August 2014:  The Georgia Tech team interviewed WIC recipients concerning 1) current methods for learning about their child’s development, 2) their reason for using such method, and 3) their preferences/opinions about a set of technology prototypes to facilitate the process. The team also interviewed nutritionists to understand the developmental milestones information that they currently convey to parents and to learn about the questions that are commonly asked by parents during their WIC visits.

Preliminary analyses suggests that parents’ information-gathering “values” related to their child’s development affected which technologies they found most and least helpful. Final data analyses will allow us to provide design insights to improve systems that aid parents in tracking their child’s development. Future research will evaluate this tracking technology within the WIC visit protocol.