Using text messaging to engage youth in a teen pregnancy prevention program

For youth, text messaging is a preferred communication method and offers an inexpensive and effective way to connect. Texting is a tool to bring educational equity to high-risk youth, including youth of color. Through a 4-year intervention, we deliver supplemental text messages to reinforce and intensify an effective teen pregnancy prevention program. We partner with Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Denver to deliver Wyman's Teen Outreach Program (TOP®), a 25-week program at eight branches each year. We randomly select four branches to deliver our intervention, a supplemental text message program to enhance TOP® program components by providing additional content to reinforce information provided through TOP®. We are in the second year of project implementation. A total of 24,689 initial SMS text messages were sent to 221 intervention participants from October 2011 to May 2012 and September 2012 to December 2012 (to be updated). Participants received texts through cell phones (75%), web-based SMS services (23%) or other mechanisms (1%). Approximately half of the messages sent asked participants to respond, to which 76% of participants responded at least one time. Response rates varied by text type: quizzes (22%), myth/fact (20%), questions (23%), program meeting reminders (19%), polls (15%), follow-up questions (6%)). Interim findings suggest a text message enhancement of a teen pregnancy prevention program offers the ability to facilitate greater engagement among high-risk youth. Standard face-to-face teen pregnancy prevention programs have limited reach. This low-cost opportunity to intensify effects for participants who face challenges in attendance and continuity is promising.