Happy, Healthy Text4baby Turns One

If you are pregnant or a new mom and haven’t heard of text4baby, it’s time you got to know a happy and healthy public-private partnership that is celebrating its first birthday this month.

Launched on February 4, 2010, by U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, text4baby is a free text messaging service that delivers timely health information three times a week during pregnancy and through a baby’s first year.  Women can sign up for the service by texting BABY (or BEBE for Spanish) to 511411.  In the year since its launch, 135,000 subscribers have signed up for the service and millions of text messages have been sent. More than 300 outreach partners, including national, state, business, academic, non-profit, and other groups, are helping to promote the service.

Text4baby puts valuable health information directly into the hands of moms and moms-to-be all around the Nation.  With the help of this free and simple service, subscribers can learn new things specific to their stage of pregnancy or age of their baby, learn about medical and nutritional services they may not realize are available to them, and get reminders to make those prenatal appointments.

As you can see in previous posts, text4baby has grown up fast and has a goal of reaching one million moms. It was also recognized by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as a winner of the Department’s new HHSInnovates award.

Text4baby is a great example of the Federal government working as a convener to put together a broad, public-private partnership that includes government, corporations, academic institutions, professional associations, tribal agencies, and non-profit organizations. Together they offered up a novel service that provides a convenient, free tool empowering people to learn what they need to know and take charge of their health.

For more information, visit text4baby.org.