SmileChild

SmileChild aims to provide quality maternal and infant care education through an incentivized module-based app.

Infant mortality is a tragedy that shakes the foundations of individuals and communities. SmileChild is striving to provide quality and accessible educational resources to infant caregivers via a smartphone app with the goal of tackling infant mortality. With the motto “Learn. Earn. Smile,” SmileChild allows users to learn about important infant and maternal care topics while earning virtual credits with each topic completed that can be used to redeem physical incentives (ex. Diapers, bibs, and cribs). Caretakers complete modules on topics that range from pregnancy all the way to a child’s first birthday. These modules are carefully developed and curated in the form of accessible and entertaining games in collaboration with experts around the nation. 

Many caregivers are faced with barriers such as unreliable transportation, lack of stable housing, and economic hardship that prevent them from utilizing traditional community-based educational resources. SmileChild overcomes these barriers by bringing information and resources to the caregiver's fingertips.

The infant mortality rate of the U.S. is almost two times that of countries with comparable per capita GDPs. In 2019, 5.6 babies out of every 1,000 live births in the U.S. did not reach their first birthday; in Columbus Ohio, the infant mortality rate was 6.7 for every 1,000 live births. To further compound the problem, there are severe disparities present in infant mortality rates across the U.S. and even more so in Columbus, with infant mortality rates of Black babies being 2.5x higher than their White counterparts. 

Infant mortality is a complex problem with a variety of causes ranging from birth defects, low birth weight, maternal conditions, and sleep-related incidents. These causes are influenced by a variety of bio-psycho-social factors, culminating in deficits in access to necessary resources for child/mother care (healthy food, crib, diapers, etc.) and comprehensive/easy-to-understand education material. Deficiencies in access to proper education and resources are disproportionately large in minorities and those of low socioeconomic status. 

Infant mortality is a common public health marker for the wellness of a community. Because children are the next generation of leaders, it is crucial to both provide resources and educate caregivers on how to keep them and their infants safe. SmileChild’s target population is caregivers of newborns, specifically those in at-risk groups. We are currently focused on the central Ohio area, home to a growing urban population. The most vulnerable populations here include mothers of color, single mothers, and those below the poverty line. 

Caregivers in underserved communities lack access to quality prenatal and postnatal healthcare. This is due to multiple factors including, unstable housing, lack of transportation, and lack of awareness surrounding the resources available to them. This often results in lower birthweight babies and preterm births, contributing to higher mortality rates. The COVID-19 pandemic has also created many new obstacles that make in-person education even more difficult for this demographic. SmileChild’s dynamic app can bring quality information to these caregivers in a safe and accessible manner.

SmileChild is currently partnered with multiple institutions and organizations within the sphere of infant care such as Nationwide Children’s Hospital, The Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, Shaken Baby Task Force, and Moms2B.  Moms2B is a non-profit community-based pregnancy program based out of The Ohio State Wexner Medical Center for socioeconomically disadvantaged women to empower and improve the health status of at-risk communities.

To accurately gauge the needs of the community, multiple team members have attended educational sessions that are provided for infant caregivers through Moms2B. We have gained insight into what barriers caregivers face and what resources they already have access to. This, in turn, has influenced app development and how we approach the three main facets of our project: Learn, Earn, and Smile. 

We are also working with an OB/GYN who is the medical director of Moms2B.  Her education team consists of nurses, occupational therapists, social workers, and other health care workers. We plan on conducting a clinical study evaluating the efficacy of our app. This involves recruiting infant caregivers to participate in a study that compares the efficacy of our app to traditional educational resources in standard care. Participants will take pre and post survey’s measuring changes in their confidence levels and content comprehension. We will also track specific metrics within the app to gauge how well they interacted with the app. These results and specific feedback collected will be used to guide any further development of the app.

We currently have a beta version of the app. We plan on continuing the development of this app and testing it through an IRB-approved clinical study at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center and Nationwide Children’s Hospital within the next year. We are currently undergoing the IRB review for a 150 participant trial. Through these studies, we hope to test the efficacy of the app and gauge the need for improvements through direct feedback from the mothers. 

Community outreach is also a large part of our work. So far we have hosted panels that feature experts in the fields of maternal and fetal care, sociology, and public health from the Columbus area to share their advice and knowledge on a variety of topics. The issues discussed ranged from infant mortality rates in Columbus to racial biases in the healthcare field. We have also built a sizeable social media presence, allowing us to reach new audiences.

SmileChild uses a unique technology-driven approach to bring accessible and quality educational resources to a caregiver’s fingertips in a smartphone app. Smartphones and tablets are more accessible than ever and serve as a fitting medium for maternal health education, especially for those who find it difficult to access traditional resources. Our app guides caretakers through interactive and engaging modules that touch on a variety of topics including self-care during pregnancy and safe infant sleeping habits. We believe these interactive modules are more effective than traditional static pamphlets. Caretakers also have an incentive to complete the modules. With each successful completion, they are eligible to receive free bibs, diapers, portable cribs, and much more. 

Our first and foremost goal is to prevent another family from going through the pain of losing a baby from a preventable cause. Across Ohio, state-mandated infant healthcare education has prevented hundreds of deaths since implemented, however, there is still a lot of work to be done. We believe our technology and vision can take maternal and infant healthcare education to the next level with even larger reductions in infant mortality.  

One of our primary goals is to first provide mothers and caretakers with babies in the NICU access to the app. After a successful launch with this demographic, we hope to expand use to general infant caretakers and mothers. 

In terms of business development, we plan on continuing the customer discovery process through our clinical studies and general interviews with possible stakeholders and members of the community. This is to ensure we can deliver exactly what the community needs in the most efficient manner possible. 

In the long-term, we hope to hope to have an observable impact on the infant mortality rate in Ohio and help in efforts to decrease it. 

SmileChild will measure impact based on metrics taken from users of the application, survey results, and data from multiple randomized controlled trials assessing differences in caretakers’ knowledge, behavioral changes, and health outcomes in-app versus non-app groups. Within the short term, SmileChild hopes to educate mothers in the Columbus community through every NICU. In the long term, once educational attainment can be demonstrated, Smilechild hopes to move statewide to allow every mother who has a child to be able to download the application. The application is connected to a database that collects screen time, login, and quiz scoring data that will be coupled with hospital data of revisitation and confidence in infant care to understand the impact of the app on the population using it. Incentives will be monitored to determine which resources are of the highest need to such a population. 

SmileChild has been a novel idea that gains a lot of support but has trouble gathering funding since SmileChild is a purely volunteer-based interprofessional and collaborative initiative. During the pandemic, our partnering organizations and mentors who are involved in the healthcare field have competing demands and limited amounts of funding. We are currently seeking out funding to carry out clinical studies to validate our app. 

Our development team is currently comprised of undergraduate student volunteers. This has led to discontinuity in the development process due to volunteers graduating. We would like to hire external developers to streamline the development. 

We are also seeking funding to continue our community outreach efforts and reach as many caretakers as possible.

SmileChild’s team is composed of young tech-savvy students aimed at keeping the app consistent with the new age with accessible content that is relevant and engaging to a new population of mothers. 

Our team is structured around four main branches: Outreach, Design, Development, and Research.

Co-President: Ava Barone

Ava’s interests lie in maternal healthcare and outreach. Her mother was pregnant when she was in high school and was of advanced maternal age. The fears and concerns her family faced during that time motivated her to make a difference in the sector of infant mortality, particularly those without access to healthcare resources.

Co-President: Devi Nelakurti

Devi finds herself passionate about taking initiatives in maternal and infant care with her background in both biomedical and computer science. Personally, her loved ones have suffered from losing their infant child and recognize the decrease in communication about maternal self-care and infant care within the women in the family due to immigration. With her clinical research experience, she helped construct the IRB proposals for the research studies to test the app’s efficacy and garner feedback. 

Director of Research: Amani Djouadi

After working on COVID solutions for underserved communities within central Ohio, Amani understood the importance of listening to and understanding the needs of people when looking for solutions. She decided to translate this awareness to the maternal healthcare sector by joining SmileChild’s research efforts. 

Currently, SmileChild utilizes primarily start-up funds collected from various grants to advance the minimum viable product and clinical studies. In the process, we have formed strong relationships with various hospital systems, insurance companies, nonprofits, and resource providers. The internal or university-based resources like the Moms2B program at the Wexner Medical Center is our collaborating organization that gives educational content to integrate into the app, and their healthcare professionals review the iterations of the app to uphold medical accuracy. 

External resources include SmileChild’s research collaboration with Nationwide Children’s Hospital, a top-five children’s hospital in the US, which enables us to gain traction and influence to spread the app to caregivers across the nation. SmileChild is also collaborating with Medicaid and other local nonprofits to receive underused perks such as unredeemed diapers, toys, and other incentives.

SmileChild is dedicated to addressing healthcare disparities that contribute to the astonishingly high infant mortality rate in Ohio and beyond. We seek to democratize infant and maternal healthcare education so families no longer have to go through the heartbreak of losing a baby to preventable causes. We also seek to make pregnancy easier for women by giving them quality information to aid them in their journey. COVID-19 has further exacerbated healthcare disparities, but we believe our solution is in a position to address them effectively. 

The Pozen Social Innovation Prize would allow us to push forward the technical development of our app and advance our research proving its efficacy. Mothers and caretakers would gain access to the app even sooner and at a larger scale.