Discussion
’ health behavior, ’s healthcare behaviors
This study aimed to develop a comprehensive and tailored mHealth intervention program that promotes healthy behaviors for children from multicultural families. The program involved Lay Health Worker (LHW) elements that were incorporated to optimize the effectiveness of the mHealth intervention based on participants’ characteristics. There is a substantial need to provide support for marriage immigrant women to help improve their parenting and manage health issues of their young children better. Learning to promote and manage necessary health care for young children is a critical public health matter in Korea. This is a rare study that developed and tested an mHealth application specifically designed to help marriage immigrant women. It demonstrated that a tailored mHealth program, combined with an LHW component, can effectively contribute to enhanced health-promoting behaviors, eHealth literacy, and family strength in multicultural families. This program is meaningful because it directly improved families’ health behavior. These findings are in line with Conway et al.’s (This study also addressed the relative importance of the LHW component. Specifically, within the mH-L group, supported by LHW, children’s healthcare behaviors and eHealth literacy at T2 surpassed those of the control group. These findings imply an impact on sustained behavioral changes compared to the group solely receiving mHealth interventions. This aligns partially with prior research indicating the efficacy of LHW in improving behavior among participants with lower socioeconomic status (The mH group, which received the mHealth program, showed an improvement in eHealth literacy after the intervention. The mH-L group showed a sustained increase. eHealth literacy refers to everything from finding, evaluating, and applying electronic information to solving health problems (The mH-L and mH groups, both of which used the mobile application, showed improved family strength. Marriage immigrant women, having moved to a new society, are dependent on their husbands (The ability to observe these effects in this study stemmed from a rigorous analysis of participants and their surrounding environment based on the ADDIE model. In the analysis stage of the ADDIE model, the participant and the environment surrounding the participant were thoroughly analyzed to deliver tailored health information to the target population. Looking at the existing parent support program for immigrants, it was found that most studies considered tailoring programs for cultural adaptation (Our results support the conclusion that, while mHealth interventions offer advantages such as the lack of spatiotemporal restrictions and the ease of access to relevant information and services, addition of interpersonal support component such as LHWs may be necessary to ensure lasting program effectiveness. This is especially important for programs directed at vulnerable populations like marriage immigrant women.