“Text4baby” Service Aims to Reach One Million Moms
The brand new, groundbreaking, and free mobile information service, “text4baby” has announced its major expansion. This program was created by The National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition (HMHB) and its expansion has been made possible through a multi-million dollar commitment by Johnson & Johnson.
The text4baby program is designed to offer practical information to women about improving their own and their infant's health, especially those with limited access to obstetric information and care. The program is about to gain thousands of additional partners in communities at risk and its goal is to serve one million mothers by 2012.
“Through text4baby we hope to better understand how cell phones can be used to improve public health generally,” said Chief Technology Officer for the Department of Health and Human Services, Todd Park. He added that his department will continue conducting “rigorous evaluations of the health impact of text4baby.”
All women need to do to sign up for the service is text BABY (or BEBE for Spanish) to 511411. They will then receive free SMS text messages each week, timed to their baby’s due date. The texts will provide women with valuable information on the best ways to take care of their health and their babies’ health.
“With this significant commitment from Johnson & Johnson, we will be able to see that thousands more women will be able to take advantage of the service and, potentially, get connected to care that will have lifelong consequences,” said CEO of National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, Judy Meehan.
The U.S. Government is helping to raise awareness for the text4baby service as well. U.S. Defense is also exploring the value of the service for military families. Text4baby is currently the Nation’s largest mobile health initiative.
