Volunteers’ experiences of providing telephone-based breast-feeding peer support in the RUBY randomised controlled trial

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Abstract

Objective:

The Ringing Up About Breastfeeding earlY (RUBY) randomised controlled trial (RCT) found that a telephone-based peer volunteer support intervention increased breast-feeding duration in a setting with high breast-feeding initiation. This sub-study of the RUBY RCT describes the motivation, preparation and experiences of volunteers who provided the peer support intervention.

Design:

An online survey was completed by 154 (67 %) volunteers after ceasing volunteering.

Setting:

Volunteers provided peer support to primiparous women ( n 574) who birthed at one of three public hospitals in Melbourne, Australia, between February 2013 and December 2015.

Participants:

Volunteers ( n 230) had themselves breastfed for at least 6 months and received 4 h of training for the role.

Results:

The median number of mothers supported was two (range 1–11), and two-thirds of respondents supported at least one mother for 6 months. Volunteers were motivated by a strong desire to support new mothers to establish and continue breast-feeding. Most (93 %) considered the training session adequate. The majority (60 %) reported following the call schedule ‘most of the time’, but many commented that ‘it depends on the mother’. Overall, 84 % of volunteers were satisfied with the role and reported that the experience was enjoyable (85 %) and worthwhile (90 %). Volunteers agreed that telephone support for breast-feeding was valued by women (88 %) and that the programme would be effective in helping women to breastfeed (93 %).

Conclusions:

These findings are important for those developing similar peer support programmes in which recruiting volunteers and developing training requirements are an integral and recurrent part of volunteer management.

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Most cited references 10

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Is Open Access

The Program Sustainability Assessment Tool: A New Instrument for Public Health Programs

Douglas Luke, Annaliese Calhoun, Christopher B. Robichaux … (2014)

Introduction Public health programs can deliver benefits only if they are able to sustain programs, policies, and activities over time. Although numerous sustainability frameworks and models have been developed, there are almost no assessment tools that have demonstrated reliability or validity or have been widely disseminated. We present the Program Sustainability Assessment Tool (PSAT), a new and reliable instrument for assessing the capacity for program sustainability of various public health and other programs. Methods A measurement development study was conducted to assess the reliability of the PSAT. Program managers and staff (n = 592) representing 252 public health programs used the PSAT to rate the sustainability of their program. State and community-level programs participated, representing 4 types of chronic disease programs: tobacco control, diabetes, obesity prevention, and oral health. Results The final version of the PSAT contains 40 items, spread across 8 sustainability domains, with 5 items per domain. Confirmatory factor analysis shows good fit of the data with the 8 sustainability domains. The subscales have excellent internal consistency; the average Cronbach’s α is 0.88, ranging from 0.79 to 0.92. Preliminary validation analyses suggest that PSAT scores are related to important program and organizational characteristics. Conclusion The PSAT is a new and reliable assessment instrument that can be used to measure a public health program’s capacity for sustainability. The tool is designed to be used by researchers, evaluators, program managers, and staff for large and small public health programs.