Ask “TxTina” – Going Mobile with Sex Education and Teen Pregnancy Prevention Awareness

Program background: The Iowa Department of Human Services and EyesOpenIowa partnered with Fleishman-Hillard to build on last year's statewide teen pregnancy prevention campaign, Talking Sex Together (TxT), aimed to motivate behavior change and impact teen attitudes and perceptions about sexual health. To keep the program new and fresh, this year TxT introduced “TxTina” a trained health educator to serve as campaign spokesperson. Via a text message hotline, teens submit questions and receive instant, anonymous and accurate answers from an animated character, “TxTina.” Ask “TxTina” provides a risk-free outlet for teens to address important sexual health questions/issues, which may otherwise go unanswered.

Results: • More than 1,500 teens signed-up to receive via text weekly quizzes, facts and polls related to sexual health. • 81 percent of participating teens reported the campaign positively influenced attitudes, behaviors, and decisions related to sex. • Teens submitted 1,110 sexual health-related questions and received instant, accurate answers via text from TxTina, a trained sex educator, enabling teens to make educated decisions.

Conclusions: Leveraging research findings and principles from proven behavior change models, Talking Sex Together (TxT) delivers medically accurate information that empowers teens to make informed decisions and stimulate on-going dialogue about sexual health. Efforts to affect health attitudes, perceptions and behavior change work best with the inclusion of relevant theoretical frameworks, audience segmentation, careful message design and appropriate channel selection. Implemented at the state level, this campaign serves as a scalable model to reach niche audiences with important health information and motivate intended action.