Healthy Pregnancy Advice Via Text
There is a text message service that provides expectant mothers with timely advice and healthy pregnancy tips via text message. All pregnant women have to do is text "BABY" ("BEBE" for Spanish) to 511411, and they will receive texts advising them to drink enough water, get flu shots, and how they can get free or low-cost health care for themselves and their baby, among many other topics.
The program is geared towards low-income and minority women, especially, as these groups tend to neglect prenatal care more then others. The service is called text4baby, and at times it has been used to deliver urgent alerts. Last fall, for example, a text went out warning women not to use sleep positioners, as they had been linked to infant deaths. In California, a text was sent to subscribers in a specific zip code that was experiencing a pertussis outbreak.
