The eHealth Platform project constitutes a highly original, complex intervention delivered in collaboration with the public healthcare service and the engagement of young couples and the community at large in Malaysia. The project aims to improve the pre-pregnancy health of women to reduce the risk of gestational diabetes and Type 2 diabetes in the next generation. The objective is to improve the health of prospective mothers before she conceives her first child.
The design of the project is guided by the UK Medical Research Council’s guidelines for developing, implementing, and evaluating complex interventions to improve health. Complex interventions are inherently non-pharmacological in nature, and looks into behavioural aspects relating to changes in complex inter-related systems towards understanding how parts of the system interact to produce individual (or higher-level) outcomes.
The intervention consists of a novel combination of behaviour change counseling and support through contact with community health promoters (CHPs) and access to a personalised mobile application which is a component in the E-Health platform. The couples will be introduced to the mobile application at the start of the 8-month intervention.