Arkansas Launches Pregnancy+ App to Tackle Maternal Health Crisis

The Pregnancy+ app will provide pregnant women in Arkansas with personalized content and information. (Provided)

Arkansas hopes to improve its dismal maternal health record with help from a new smartphone app.

The app, called Philips Avent Pregnancy+ and targeted to Arkansans, went live on Feb. 14 and features information and services tailored to improving pregnancy outcomes.

The app’s appearance coincides with state lawmakers’ approval of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ legislation designed to enhance maternal health in the state, which ranks at or near the bottom in maternal mortality as well as infant mortality rates nationally.

“Maternal health in Arkansas is in crisis,” said Olivia Walton, founder and CEO of Ingeborg Initiatives of Bentonville, in a March 10 news release supporting the app. “Lawmakers are now focused on it, but it is going to take all stakeholders — public, private, philanthropic — to get women the care they need before, during and after birth.” Ingeborg Initiatives works to improve maternal health and women’s economic opportunities in Arkansas.

“We want to meet moms where they are — on their phones — providing them with the necessary resources at their fingertips,” Walton said. “This is a positive step towards helping ensure healthier pregnancies through access to critical information and services that will help build healthy families.” Walton’s husband is Tom Walton, grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton.

The app was developed by Royal Philips, a health technology company with its North American headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It offers Arkansans information about local health units and data from the Arkansas Department of Health.

In the first week of the app going live, more than 2,500 Arkansans unlocked customized parts of the app. Anna Koelsch, Ingeborg Initiatives’ director, said in an interview with Arkansas Business that 26% of those users are 21 to 25 years old.

The most clicked resources have guided users on how to apply for Medicaid benefits, how to schedule appointments at local health clinics and how to sign up for the federal supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children, known as WIC, Koelsch said.

“This is just really positive,” Koelsch said. “The whole goal for this is to increase awareness of resources that are available to moms in the state. And to me, these numbers were really, really lovely to see.”

Michigan’s Start

In June 2022, Michigan became the first state to use the customizable Pregnancy+ app.

Dana Medema, senior vice president of Philips Personal Health, North America, said that Philips was able to see right away that people were downloading and using the app.

Users told Philips that they were made aware of services that they didn’t even know were available, Medema said.

Philips also found that people also used a resource that they would have known about only by going through the app, she said.

Educating women is a goal of the app, as more than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable, Medema said. “And so part of that prevention, then, is starting with access to information, helping me to be healthier at the very start of this journey,” she said.

In Michigan, between the launch of the app and November, more than 32,000 Medicaid-eligible pregnant or postpartum families have been reached through the app, said Dawn Shanafelt, the director of the maternal health division of the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services.

She said the women are using the app to educate themselves. “They have the ability to see articles and receive information in the app on certain topic areas that they’re interested in,” Shanafelt said.

The app also has articles and information about breastfeeding, insurance coverage, safety and home visiting services, which are among the department’s key areas of focus, Shanafelt said.

She said that about 3,000 families have been referred to home visiting services because of the app.

Shanafelt said that Michigan’s infant mortality rate for 2023, which was just released, was the state’s lowest on record.

She said that while the app might have helped, it can’t be given all the credit. “There’s just so many things that go into preventing the death,” Shanafelt said.

The app also includes information about urgent maternal warning signs indicating when a woman should contact her doctor.

Ingeborg Initiatives’ Koelsch said Michigan’s data showed that expectant mothers who used Pregnancy+ demonstrated higher maternal health literacy, engaged in earlier prenatal care and adopted healthier habits in general.

That was powerful information for Ingeborg, she said. “So we thought, wouldn’t it be great to have that in Arkansas, a place that we’re all working really hard to improve maternal health outcomes,” Koelsch said.

She said Ingeborg started talking with the Philips team in late September, and it was a “pretty seamless partnership.”

Royal Philips also teamed up with the Arkansas Community Foundation to provide all expectant parents in Arkansas with access to the customized state-offered information on the app. Arkansans who download the Pregnancy+ app will receive access to the premium content at no cost to them.

The cost of the app is being covered by a grant from Ingeborg Initiatives. Koelsch declined to specify the amount of the grant.

Other Measures

Dr. Kay Chandler, Arkansas’ surgeon general, said she thinks the app is “going to be very helpful.”

The app, along with the recently approved legislation called Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies Act, should improve maternal health, she said.

Chandler said some of the biggest impacts from the legislation could be that Medicaid will raise the reimbursements for vaginal deliveries and cesarean sections by 70%.

The act also creates presumptive Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women, so they can receive prenatal care while their Medicaid application is pending.

“We need to make sure that the patients themselves are aware of all the things that they can be doing before pregnancy, during pregnancy, warning signs after pregnancy to watch for, so that we can all be involved in achieving these better health outcomes for moms and babies,” Chandler said.

Without the Pregnancy+ app, searching through government websites to learn what resources available to pregnant women could be challenging, Koelsch said.

“And frankly, pregnant moms, who have a lot going on and are trying to navigate a lot of challenges, have to figure that out on their own,”  Koelsch said. “And we want to make that as easy as possible.”