The effects of a YouTube prenatal program on social support, environmental health behavior, and content satisfaction:...

BACKGROUND: Pregnant women in the post-COVID-19 era are obtaining information on maternal and fetal health, postpartum care, and newborn health during pregnancy via non-face-to-face prenatal education interventions. Social media is extensively utilized for seeking information, making it an appropriate medium for delivering knowledge. There is a scarcity of YouTube-based interventions specifically designed to educate pregnant women despite the high demand for environmental health education to safeguard maternal health from environmental risk factors. This non-randomized study aimed to investigate the effects of an environmental health program utilizing YouTube videos on social support, environmental behavior, and satisfaction among Korean pregnant women, based on Swanson’s knowledge-empathy-caring theory. METHODS: This study employed a non-equivalent control group pre-post-test design according to the transparent reporting of evaluations with non-randomized designs reporting guideline. The experimental program consisted of prenatal education delivered through Zoom conferences and seven researcher-developed YouTube videos over a 4-week period. The control group received face-to-face prenatal education for 4 weeks in the public health centers. A total of 72 pregnant women participated, with 38 in the experimental group and 34 in the control group. The program was conducted between March and November 2022 in two cities in South Korea. RESULTS: The YouTube-based approach was effective in improving content satisfaction (t=-4.27 p <.001) and personal environmental health behavior (t=-2.48, p =.015). However, it was ineffective in enhancing social support (U = 559.00, p =.323) and community environmental behavior (t=-0.51, p =.609). DISCUSSION: Prenatal education via YouTube requires the incorporation of empathy as a strategy to elicit emotional responses from pregnant women. The YouTube video intervention could promote personal environmental health behavior, but it did not effectively support pregnant women socially. YouTube can serve as a valuable resource for prenatal education by enhancing personal environmental health behaviors, as well as improving content satisfaction among expectant mothers. Maternal healthcare providers can utilize social media as a means to deliver environmental knowledge, elicit satisfactory emotions, and encourage healthy behaviors. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study was registered on February 18, 2022, under the registration number KCT0007006 in the Korean Clinical Research Information Service (CRIS), which can be retrieved from https://cris.nih.go.kr/cris/search/detailSearch.do?seq=23860&status=5&seq_group=21307&search_page=M ).