What is a Kangaroo-a-thon?
The Kangaroo-a-thon is a friendly and fun competition that recognizes babies that are held the longest and the coaches that are the most supportive of kangaroo care in a period of time.
It acknowledges and celebrates babies, parents, and coaches around the world. It started by creative NICU staff as one way to celebrate, share, and engage during the International Kangaroo Care Awareness Day (May 15th).
A kangaroo care coach creates and manages a team within their own group or hospital unit using the web application. The team leader may then join or create a contest (for his/her own team only or multi-team contest). Neonatal Intensive Care Units have participated in Kangaroo-a-thons for years and now The Zaky app is here to do the calculations so that more teams can participate.
Visit www.kangaroo.care to find more information about kangaroo care, the kangaroo care awareness day, and the events happening around the world that celebrate kangaroo care.
What is The Zaky® app (mobile and web app)?
The Zaky app is engineered to expand the practice of kangaroo care in hospitals and homes globally. You will be an active participant in improving the quality and state of the science for kangaroo care.
The Zaky app streamlines the time and effort of doing the calculations to determining performance (and the winners!). It improves accuracy, reduces errors, displays data in real time, and increases participation and satisfaction. No more long days of manual calculations to determine who was held, for how long, and who was the coach (coach is anyone that helps the parent/baby do kangaroo care).
Make sure all the sessions are logged in and let The Zaky app display the daily, cumulative progress, and final results of each team member and each team in a contest.
All coaches login in this web app to join or create a team, and join or create a contest.
Parents download the The Zaky mobile app, register their baby, and then select COMPETE in the lower bar to join a team:
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https://tinyurl.com/TheZakyiOS
The Zaky app is engineered by Nurtured by Design and funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
What information can I see from The Zaky app?
- To be able to compete when there are teams of different sizes, the duration is normalized by calculating the average of kangaroo care of a team; that is, the duration of kangaroo care by all the babies in the team, then divided by the number of babies registered, then divided by the number of days in the contest. It is important that all the babies are registered in the team so they can be counted.
- See each baby’s username duration and average in kangaroo care, and the leaderboard of the babies in your team (daily and in the dates of a contest).
- Each kangaroo care coach (a coach is anyone that supports the parents and babies) and leaderboard of the duration of the sessions where the parents select them as “most supportive” (daily and in the dates of a contest).
- The kangaroo care average (duration per baby per day) for each team, and all the teams in your contest (daily and in the dates of a contest).
- The number of babies, number of coaches in your team and in all the teams in the contest, and many more!
What about privacy?
To protect everyone’s privacy, only parents may decide to log and share their baby’s kangaroo care sessions with the team in The Zaky mobile app.
Only the kangaroo care activity is shared from the parents’ account (not feeding, sleep, growth, hygiene, journal, etc.).
Only screen names (set by parents and coaches) and city/state/country are shared with other parents and outside a team.
All data is de-identified when shared outside the team, contest, or the app (see our privacy policies)
Let’s hold babies around the world, have some fun, and let The Zaky app support your efforts to make kangaroo care and skin-to-skin contact a sustainable practice!