Text2BHealthy: Development and evaluation of a text message-based nutrition education program

School-based interventions that include parents and children have a greater impact than those targeting children alone. In order to reach the parents of children participating in school-based nutrition education, Maryland Food Supplement Nutrition Education (FSNE) partnered with the University of Maryland's School of Public Health and eight elementary schools in Maryland to develop and administer Text2BHealthy, an innovative text message program for use in low-income schools. This program leverages the success of text-based advertising tools to complement the direct nutrition education that FSNE provides to elementary school children by sending targeted, behaviorally-focused messages to parents. Text2BHealthy participants opt themselves into the program, and once enrolled, parents are sent 2-3 text messages per week for 4 months. The text messages are unique to each school and contain information that is timely, targeted to the school and surrounding community, and provide actionable nudges that encourage behavior change. Messages either inform participants about nutrition or physical activity events in their community or inform parents about nutritious options or physical activities offered at their child's school. Evaluation strategies include pre and post-surveys, text-based questions, and focus groups examining physical activity and nutrition behavioral change. This presentation will describe the Text2BHealthy program (including participant recruitment, message design, and program evaluation), provide information about the web-based platform that we use to send the text messages, and explain the challenges in using a text-message program with a low-income audience and how we addressed these challenges. This workshop will include an interactive demonstration of the text message technology.