Exploring Usage of COVID Coach, a Public Mental Health App Designed for the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evaluation of Analytics Data

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted mental health and well-being. Mobile mental health apps can be scalable and useful tools in large-scale disaster responses and are particularly promising for reaching vulnerable populations. COVID Coach is a free, evidence-informed mobile app designed...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of medical Internet research 2021-03, Vol.23 (3), p.e26559-e26559
Main Authors: Jaworski, Beth K, Taylor, Katherine, Ramsey, Kelly M, Heinz, Adrienne, Steinmetz, Sarah, Pagano, Ian, Moraja, Giovanni, Owen, Jason E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Coping
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
COVID-19 - diagnosis
COVID-19 - epidemiology
COVID-19 - psychology
Data Science
Disease transmission
Female
Humans
Internet access
Male
Medical research
Mental depression
Mental disorders
Mental Health
Mobile Applications - statistics & numerical data
Original Paper
Pandemics
Post traumatic stress disorder
Public health
Retention
SARS-CoV-2 - isolation & purification
Software
Stress management
Symptoms
Use statistics
Vulnerability
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Summary:The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted mental health and well-being. Mobile mental health apps can be scalable and useful tools in large-scale disaster responses and are particularly promising for reaching vulnerable populations. COVID Coach is a free, evidence-informed mobile app designed specifically to provide tools and resources for addressing COVID-19-related stress. The purpose of this study was to characterize the overall usage of COVID Coach, explore retention and return usage, and assess whether the app was reaching individuals who may benefit from mental health resources. Anonymous usage data collected from COVID Coach between May 1, 2020, through October 31, 2020, were extracted and analyzed for this study. The sample included 49,287 unique user codes and 3,368,931 in-app events. Usage of interactive tools for coping and stress management comprised the majority of key app events (n=325,691, 70.4%), and the majority of app users tried a tool for managing stress (n=28,009, 58.8%). COVID Coach was utilized for ≤3 days by 80.9% (n=34,611) of the sample whose first day of app use occurred within the 6-month observation window. Usage of the key content in COVID Coach predicted returning to the app for a second day. Among those who tried at least one coping tool on their first day of app use, 57.2% (n=11,444) returned for a second visit; whereas only 46.3% (n=10,546) of those who did not try a tool returned (P
ISSN:1438-8871
1439-4456
1438-8871
DOI:10.2196/26559