Young women and cell phones: Can we text our way to better health?

Young adults today grew up in an age of mobile technology. The first text messages were sent in the early 1990s and today we use cell phones for much more than talking. There are more than 260 million cell pone subscribers in the US and most are English-speaking Hispanics. People use their cell phones to text message, take and see photos or videos, play games, email, access the internet and play music. More Americans say it would be very hard to give up a cell phone than to give up the internet or television.

As text messaging has increased in popularity it has been tested as an adjunct to routine health care in a variety of preventive health care settings and in the management of chronic medical conditions. Text messaging may be ideal for improving communication between health care providers and patients, for providing lab results to patients and for reminding patients about appointments. In this age of electronic medical records, it would be ideal to link text message systems to existing technologies.

Medication non-adherence is a major public health issue and text messages may also help improve medication continuation. We will present findings from an ongoing study of nearly 500 women under age 25 who are receiving daily text messages that remind them to take their birth control pills. Preliminary data supports national data on text messaging habits and suggests that daily text messages improve contraceptive continuation.