Delaware partners celebrate text4baby success
Participating Delaware partners who helped enroll women in text4baby, a free text-messaging service of the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, celebrated their top finish in the 2011 national text4baby state enrollment contest.
Text4baby provides a fast and convenient way of communicating health and safety information via cell phones during pregnancy and during the baby’s first year of life. By simply texting “BABY” (or “BEBE” for information in Spanish) to 511411, women can register to receive weekly text messages that are in sync with key times based on their baby’s due date and at significant points throughout the baby’s first year.
The tips and messages have been developed in collaboration with government and nonprofit health experts.
At the Jan. 30 celebration event at the John H. Ammon Medical Education Center, Sen. Tom Carper (D-Delaware) described how seamlessly the Delaware organizations worked together to help the First State take first place. Those partners included Christiana Care Health System’s Obstretrics and Gynecology Department, the University of Delaware’s Center for Disabilities Studies and the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services.
Key Delaware leaders who attended the conference included Rita Landgraf, Secretary of Delaware’s Department of Health and Social Services, Karyl Rattay, M.D., director of Delaware’s Division of Public Health, Lolita Lopez, president and CEO of Westside Family Healthcare and Rosa Rivera, president and CEO of Henrietta Johnson Medical Center. Both Westside and Henrietta are federally-qualified health centers.
Over the course of the contest, partners in Delaware used diverse outreach methods, combining media, a state-wide contest and targeted distribution of text4baby materials to every obstetrician in Delaware. These collective efforts helped text4baby register 4.5 percent of eligible moms during the contest period, nearly doubling the number of participants in the state to a total of 979 users as of October 2011.
“Our patients truly value the text4baby services,” said Mary Stirparo, the practice manager at Christiana Hospital’s Department of Obstetrics. “One patient, after receiving a text sought care at an Ob/Gyn unit and that all came out of text4baby. Thanks to text4baby, this patient ended up giving birth to a healthy baby.”
Photo gallery: text4baby success
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