R U Using SMS to Communicate with Youth in Urban Communities?

Background:  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Division of Violence Prevention developed a communications program, i2i: What R U Looking 4 (i2i), to promote respectful, nonviolent dating relationships among 11- to 14-year-old youth in urban communities, as part of Dating Matters, a comprehensive teen dating violence (TDV) prevention initiative.  Due to concentrated poverty, lack of resources, and exposure to community violence, this audience may be at an increased risk of TDV. In addition, few health communication programs have been effective in reaching this target audience and have focused on the specific topic area of TDV.

Program background:  The i2i Youth Communications Program reaches youth by activating authentic messages and messengers to reinforce healthy behaviors through engaging communities and partners, utilizing near peers (i2i Ambassadors), and providing resources and tools. The i2i Youth Communications Program is designed for implementation by four community Health Departments participating in the Dating Matters randomized control trial.  On behalf of CDC, Ogilvy conducted research to determine the best digital media platforms to effectively reach youth in these communities with limited resources and varying technical expertise of implementers. Based on the research, Ogilvy designed the program to include Facebook and SMS as they are the primary communication tool for ages 11-14. The use of Facebook and SMS allow for cross-platform interaction and participation in other parts of the program through event and materials promotion. The SMS program used community-specific text messages, opposed to widely-broadcast mass messages, which personalized the experience for those who opted-in to the SMS program.  Ogilvy setup the program and developed an implementation plan for communities to encourage promotion of SMS keywords and short codes. In addition, Ogilvy drafted content for i2i Ambassadors to revise and approve each month. 

Evaluation Methods and Results:  Each month, Ogilvy logged new users and responses to poll questions for communities. In total, 32 people opted-in to the program: 22 of whom are youth across the communities (program facilitators account for remaining participants). Additionally, the 11 poll questions received 30 responses. 

Conclusions:  While the use of SMS is a promising solution for health communicators, more research is needed to determine effectiveness for specific audiences and implementation approaches. The presentation will detail lessons learned from the i2i program, including:

• Many young people share phones and did not want to opt into a program that would irritate anyone using the phone.
• Opting in to a multi-step program is often foreign to young people who are used to using text messaging only for communicating with friends.
• Competing priorities for implementers within communities caused limited promotion of the digital components on the local level. Additionally, not having control of program promotion also factored in to the low adoption rates. 

Implications for research and/or practice:  Social media is a key tool for health communicators. Sharing best practices and lessons learned is key to furthering the field of practice. Lessons learned from the i2i text message program can be applied when developing new SMS programs to reach youth or SMS programs that are implemented on the community level.