Using Digital Strategies to Reach Pregnant Women with Health and Safety Messages

Background: Half of Americans go online for health information. Pregnant women frequently turn to the internet and social media for tips and videos on pregnancy.  In addition, more than 64% of women are prescribed medicines during pregnancy. Many women take medicines for chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and depression which may start or get worse during pregnancy. Pregnant women and new mothers also have to make complex decisions about which foods and other products are safe for themselves and their babies.

Program background: The FDA Office of Women’s Health has digital and print resources to connect women to information on the safe use of medicines, devices and foods during pregnancy and breastfeeding. They also maintain a webpage that lists pregnancy registries: studies that collect health information from women who take medicines and vaccines when they are pregnant and breastfeeding. OWH partnered with Text4Baby to produce a video that encourages pregnant women to 1) sign up for Text4Baby and receive free health and safety messages 2) ask their doctor about the use of medicine during pregnancy and consider joining a registry 3) visit www.fda.gov/pregnancy for more resources. FDA and Text4Baby encouraged partner organizations to order print publications from a special pregnancy order page on USA.gov and launched the video during National Women’s Health Week when people were primed to look for and share this type of information. Promotion included:

• A Twitter chat with text4baby and MotherToBaby (OTIS)
• social media kit with sample messages that partners could share
• Google Adwords on YouTube to promote the video

Evaluation Methods and Results: 

• 500% increase in hits to its pregnancy page www.fda.gov/pregnancy
• twitter chat tweets reached an estimated 872,864 collective users and harnessed an estimated 7,741,707 impressions
• Google ad words English: Total Impressions: 3,287,832, Total Video Views: 5,067 Spanish: Total Impressions: 314,236 Total Video Views: 1,057

Conclusions: Working with relevant partners and creating packaged social media content can significantly amplify your message.

Implications for research and/or practice:  1) Twitter chat participants were skewed heavily toward health professionals and organizations. Employ strategies to reach out to pregnant women directly and get consumers to join in. 2)  Most people did not watch the entire video. We would consider creating shorter videos in the future. 3) OWH will continue to explore strategic partnerships to reach pregnant women. OWH will engage with the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Maternal Health Team to create communications and other social media strategies to highlight upcoming changes to pregnancy labeling for regulated products.