Construção e validação de um protótipo de aplicativo móvel para agentes comunitários de saúde no acompanhamento alimentar de crianças até 2 anos

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) proposes the use of mobile technologies as a support for care in primary care with the potential to strengthen the assistance of health services, including the monitoring of infant feeding. Among the professionals, the Community Health Agents have worked directly with the families, establishing relationships of trust, with emphasis on actions in the nutritional monitoring of children in early childhood. The objective of the study is to build and validate a mobile application prototype for Community Health Agents in the dietary monitoring of families with children up to 2 years old in the Family Health Strategy. Study of the methodological type, carried out in a municipality in the interior of Ceará from four stages: integrative realization; focus group with Community Agents; development and validation of the content and appearance of the prototype by judges. The project was approved by the ethics committee under opinion 5,777,544. Validation involved the participation of 13 community health agents and 13 content and appearance judges. The focus group with community health agents was carried out using a Lean inception strategy, which highlighted the needs and potential for developing the application, with emphasis on more accessible information on food introduction and use/reading of graphs of the child's weight and height. Validation of the application titled “Nutrir com aGente” showed a BMI of 0.88 for content and 0.81 for appearance. Appearance judges suggested that the virtual assistant had more interaction, that the figures were standardized and that there was a screen to edit the children's information. The content judges, on the other hand, addressed reviewing the definitions of artificial feeding and complementary feeding, and even suggested including more content in the application. The judges' suggestions from both areas were essential for the composition of the content and final layout. The results of the study indicate that the application can strengthen the quality of care by contributing to an evidence-based practice and optimizes the monitoring of actions aimed at infant feeding during home visits in the Family Health Strategy. In addition to this scenario, the application can be used in other care scenarios, as it brings together, in a single digital solution, useful functionalities in monitoring families with young children. It is concluded that the application is a valid and reliable strategy that can guide the CHA in monitoring and providing guidance on feeding/breastfeeding children up to 2 years old in the field of primary health care.