Text4baby Turns 2: Program Successes and Lessons Learned

Background: Text4baby is a free mobile information service that provides timely health information in English and Spanish via cell phone to women during pregnancy and extending through their babies' first year.

Program background: Since the program launched in February 2010, more than 320,000 individuals have enrolled, over 32 million messages have been sent, and 725 outreach partners are promoting the service nationwide. Additionally, text4baby has expanded its content to include alert messages and new interactive enhancements.

Evaluation Methods and Results: During this presentation, we will share results from data collected as part of program quality improvement, including text4baby user type, referral source, and reason for cancellation. We will also share data on response rates from various questions we have asked our users and will show how this type of feedback loop has supported program staff to improve promotional and outreach strategies.  

Conclusions: The use of mobile technology as a communications channel provides a unique opportunity to access real-time data on text4baby user signup and engagement, and to gather instantaneous feedback from text4baby users. 

Implications for research and/or practice: Text4baby serves as a model that can be replicated with other health education or mobile health programs.