HCC: Small: First Days: Improving Maternal and Infant Health with Persuasive Technology

本建议的重点是动机和说服技术（MPT）的个人健康和健康决策的发展。特别是有说服力的技术可以帮助影响母亲做出更好的健康选择。动机技术可以提高社区卫生工作者的工作绩效。MPT是一个相对较新的领域，还有许多基础性工作有待完成。该项目借鉴了心理学、经济学、修辞学的经典说服理论，以及最近关于说服技术的文献，为该方法提供信息。新兴的MPT文献表明，许多经典的影响机制起作用。通过信息和通信技术。但是相对较少的工作比较了这些机制的相对力量，这对于MPT作为一门设计科学的发展是重要的。在MPT具有巨大潜在影响的发展中地区，关于说服的工作做得很少——创新文献的传播表明，个人选择是许多贫困社区发展面临的主要挑战。这个项目的目的是比较不同的说服机制在母婴保健的背景下的相对权力。这项工作的结果将对美国服务不足的社区产生深远的影响。例如，PI最近对美国移民农场工人语言学习的研究表明，他们面临着发展中地区穷人面临的许多挑战。据估计，美国有1300万这样的工人。教育水平低下、缺乏对正规卫生系统的信任和参与、与传统做法的冲突，所有这些都再现了发展中地区在卫生保健方面所面临的挑战。产妇和婴儿健康是社会发展的最基本指标之一。它们是联合国确定的八个千年发展目标中的两个。这项研究将揭示在向贫困社区提供母婴保健方面的挑战，以及找到克服这些挑战的实际手段。该项目的成功将为在保健领域广泛使用MPT铺平道路，并将为其在农业、教育和可持续发展等其他领域的应用提供参考。

This proposal focuses on the development of motive and persuasive technologies (MPT) for personal health and health decision making. In particular persuasive technologies could help influence mothers to make better health choices. Motive technologies can improve community health worker job performance. MPT is a relatively new area and much foundational work remains to be done. This project draws on classical theories of persuasion from psychology, economics, rhetoric, and the recent literature on persuasive technologies to inform the approach. The nascent MPT literature has shown that many classical influence mechanisms ?work? via information and communication technology. But relatively little work has compared the relative power of these mechanisms, which is important for MPT to grow as a design science. And very little work has been done on persuasion in developing regions where MPT has great potential impact - the diffusion of innovation literature has shown that personal choice is the main challenge to development in many poor communities. The goal of this project is to compare the relative power of different persuasive mechanisms in the context of maternal and infant health care.The results of this work will have profound impacts on underserved communities in the US. For example, recent work by the PI on language learning among immigrant farm workers in the US suggests that they face many of the challenges that the poor in developing regions face. There are estimated to be 13 million such workers in the US. Poor education, lack of trust and participation in the formal health system, conflicts with traditional practices, all reproduce the challenges seen in health care in developing regions. Maternal and infant health are among the most basic indicators of social development. They comprise two of the eight Millennium Development Goals defined by the United Nations. The research will shed light on the challenges in delivering maternal and infant health care to poor communities, and on finding practical means to overcome them. Success in the project would pave the way to widespread use of MPT in health care, and will inform its application to other areas such as agriculture, education, and sustainable development.