Rosie the Chatbot: Leveraging Automated and Personalized Health Information Communication to Reduce Disparities in Maternal and Child Health

NIH RePORTER · NIH · R01 · $99,999 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

PROJECT ABSTRACT/SUMMARY Stark racial/ethnic disparities are prevalent for infant mortality and birthing people mortality and morbidity due to the interacting effects of systemic racism, homophobia, and transphobia that hinder protective social determinants of health and barriers to affordable, high-quality, culturally competent, and affirming prenatal and postnatal healthcare. The Rosie project has the potential to alter the way health information is presented to vulnerable populations. Currently, some popular programs involve resource-intensive home visits (limited in scale due to staff and cost constraints) or non-personalized text messages (may not directly address an individual's questions). We developed Rosie the chatbot that addresses both of these possible limitations by representing a scalable tool that can have widespread reach across geographies and is personalized and responsive to an individual's specific informational needs. Our Parent Grant Specific Aims are: 1) Develop technology for a chatbot, Rosie, that will provide health informational support to vulnerable mothers the moment they need it; 2) Evaluate the use of Rosie on maternal and infant outcomes; and 3) Release an open- source packet for the construction of a chatbot. This supplement proposes extensions of the Rosie software to serve diverse sexual and gender minority (SGM) communities. Supplemental aims include: 1) Enable Rosie to serve diverse sexual and gender minority (SGM) communities, and 2) Explore the feasibility and acceptability of Rosie to serve diverse sexual and gender minority (SGM) communities. The supplemental activities extend the potential impact of the Rosie mobile app by making the software resource more responsive to the needs of SGM pregnant and new parents of color, accessible, interactive, and adaptable to the different needs of users, community organizations, and health researchers. Furthermore, the Rosie software importantly removes technical barriers associated with obtaining and constructing a chatbot that can be adapted to a variety of communities and health needs.

Key facts

NIH application ID
11018855
Project number
3R01MD016037-04S1
Recipient
UNIV OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK
Principal Investigator
Thu Nguyen
Activity code
R01
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2024
Award amount
$99,999
Award type
3
Project period
2021-09-24 → 2025-06-30