Texting 4 Health (Part 2 of "R U Texting?")

Today's post is a follow-up to our initial post Conference at Stanford UniversityExit Disclaimer.

Two members of the HIV.gov team went to Texting4Health to learn from, and talk with, some of the country's leading experts in health, behavior change, and mobile technology, who are using texting in health. The conference brought together researchers, public health professionals, nonprofits, government, foundations, businesses, and more.

Bottom line: The HIV.gov team learned A LOT! Below are four take-away messages we'll share with our colleagues. The key message we heard from the presentations, workshops, and one-on-one meetings was that HIV/AIDS programs can reap significant and cost-effective benefits from integrating text messaging into their work.

1. Cell phones and texting are everywhere, and they aren't going away: Richard Adler from the Institute for the FutureExit Disclaimer set the stage by talking about the growth of cell-phone use and the demographics of the folks using them. He said that by the end of 2008, more than one-half of the people in the world will have a cell phone. (That's almost 3.5 billion people!)
2. Texting can change health behaviors: Debbi Gillotti, from Healthphone Solutions, talked about New Zealand's Stop Smoking with Mobile Phones program (STOMP), a smoking cessation intervention via text messaging. Tina Hoff and Kimberly Dasher from the Kaiser Family FoundationExit Disclaimer shared how their HIV texting campaigns in the U.S. and the Caribbean use ZIP codes to link people to local HIV testing centers.
3. Your audience will tell you what they want and how they want it--just ask them! Deb Levine from ISIS talked about her experiences using texting to reach low-income, urban youth with HIV and STD information and resources. She said focus groups and "taking it to the streets" were key to shaping the content and delivery methods of the ISIS campaign. In addition, Deb and many others at the conference also emphasized the importance of testing, changing, and retesting your campaign, based on feedback from the audience you are trying to reach.
4. There are more and more texting solutions that can help you launch and manage a texting campaign. Ken Banks from Kiwanja.netExit Disclaimer (Frontline SMS, an open-source application), Eric Holmen from SmartReply, Paul Meyer from VoxivaExit Disclaimer, and Benjamin Stein from Mobile Commons, talked about and demonstrated their products. Several presenters mentioned the importance of integrating other tools (such as hotlines and websites) into your texting campaign, depending on your content and the behavioral outcome you want to encourage. They also emphasized starting small. Their advice? Keep it simple while you are getting your feet wet. You can always expand your campaign down the road!

There are lots of ways you can use texting in the fight against HIV. You can send appointment reminders, provide support for medication adherence, help people locate testing locations, and link them to support networks. We encourage you to explore (and share with us!) how you might integrate texting into your work in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

If you are already using texting in your HIV prevention, testing, treatment, or research programs, please let us know. We can all learn from each others' experiences.

In closing, we want to thank the conference's organizer, B.J. FoggExit Disclaimer, for setting up such a fantastic lineup of speakers, a very well-organized program, and many great opportunities to network.

Stay tuned for next week's discussion of social networks!