Posted: 11/19/2010
Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing (JHUSON) assistant professor Elizabeth “Betty” Jordan, DNSc, RNC, director of the JHUSON baccalaureate program, joined her Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition (HMHBC) board members launching a bold initiative on November 9 to reach one million new mothers by the end of 2012.
According to the HMHBC, more new and underserved mothers will soon benefit from the text4baby program, made possible by a multi-million dollar multi-year commitment from Johnson & Johnson. Women who sign up for the service by texting BABY (or BEBE for Spanish) to 511411 receive free SMS text messages each week, timed to their due date or their baby’s date of birth. As part of the program’s expansion, partners are exploring the addition of new features, including increased interactivity such as quizzes to reinforce recipients comprehension as well as more opportunities to invite user feedback in order to best serve subscribers.
“The text4baby program is making important strides in educating women whose babies are, sadly, most at risk for being part of the infant mortality crisis in this country,” said Jordan. “Through the help of our network of partners at the grassroots level, I am confident we can reach the goal of one million moms by 2012.” Jordan adds that she is constantly reminded of the great need for programs like text4baby to help bridge the information gap for low-income women and new mothers who have limited access to critical obstetric and pediatric information and care.
Since January 2010, more than 25,000 women in 41 states have registered for the free text messaging service which is made possible through support from academic, private, government, and nonprofit organizations, including the White House Office on Science and Technology Policy, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CTIA-The Wireless Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, and technology company Vioxia.