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Text4Baby: Maternal Health Messages Via SMS

Where can a pregnant woman find low-cost prenatal care in her area? How should she position a car seatbelt to best protect herself and her baby? Should she get a flu shot? During pregnancy, expectant mothers can have lots of questions; Text4Baby seeks to keep pregnant women informed about pregnancy issues through regular SMS updates sent to their mobile phones.

Developed by the national Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition and mobile health service provider Voxiva, Text4Baby uses SMS to send free health news and information to US subscribers. Started in February 2010, the program now has (as of November 28, 2011) about 258,000 people enrolled.

About 24 million messages have been sent on a variety of subjects like labor and delivery, nutrition, immunizations, mental health, developmental milestones, family violence, physical activity, and breastfeeding. Messages are timed based on delivery dates, and are available in both English and Spanish by texting either "baby" (for English) or "bebe" (for Spanish) to the US shortcode 511411.