Trial Outcomes & Findings for mHealth to Help Pregnant and Postpartum Women in Recovery for Opioid Use Disorder (NCT NCT06701123)

Pregnant and postpartum individuals who met eligibility criteria were shown the informed consent form. Those who consented to participate and completed their baseline survey were provided access to the intervention (N= 109). Providers from regional treatment facilities in both Missouri and neighboring Illinois were recruited via email or telephone for enrollment (n=16).

Please note that outcome results are only included for pregnant and postpartum participants. Due to challenges recruiting pregnant and postpartum individuals, all pregnant and post-partum participants recruited were enrolled in the Aim 3 RCT and that sample is reported here.

mHealth to Help Pregnant and Postpartum Women in Recovery for Opioid Use Disorder

Craving was assessed using the Penn Alcohol Craving Scale (PACS), adapted for opioid craving by replacing alcohol-specific wording with opioid-specific wording. The PACS is a 5-item self-report measure assessing craving over the past week. However, in the current version, we only included 3 items: "(1) How much do you currently crave illicit substances (i.e. opioids, meth, cocaine, MDMAs, etc.)", "(2) In the past week, please rate how strong your desire to use illicit substances has been when something in the environment has reminded you of the illicit substance(s)." and "(3) Please imagine yourself in the environment in which you previous used illicit substances. If you were in this environment today and if it were the time of day that you typically use, what is the likelihood that you would use illicit substances today?" Each item is scored 0 to 10 and summed to a total score ranging from 0 to 30, with higher scores indicating greater craving/worse outcome.

MOUD attitudes were assessed using an adapted 8-item scale originally developed to assess negative attitudes toward methadone (Schwartz et al., 2008) and modified to reference medications for opioid use disorder (e.g., buprenorphine, methadone, naltrexone). Each item was rated on a 5-point scale from 1 to 5. A total score was calculated as the mean of the 8 items, with possible values ranging from 1 to 5. Higher scores indicate more negative attitudes toward MOUD/worse outcome.