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Posted: June 3rd, 2012 - 10:09pm Source: The Atlantic A study of over 9,000 urban minority children shows that sendingtext messages to their parents can increase the number of childrenwho receive flu vaccinations. The increase was modest, with the flu vaccination rate rising from39.9 percent to 43.6 percent. Among parents who actually receivedthe text messages, the vaccination rate rose to 46.3 percent. Some people even described the text messages as an angel on theirshoulder. Text messaging is becoming more and more valuable as a health tool.In a 2010 study, personalized text messages more than doubled thesuccess of cigarette smokers who were trying to break the habit.Some people even described the text messages as an angel on theirshoulder. And while the results from the flu study aren't asstriking, they show more success than traditional mail and phonereminders have at increasing the vaccination rate. Despite urging from the American Academy of Pediatrics, people,especially children, still aren't getting their yearly flu shot.The CDC estimates that only 51 percent of children and adolescentssix months to 17 years old were vaccinated in the 2010-2011 fluseason. And flu vaccination rates in the past have been even lowerin low-income areas. Traditional vaccine reminders have beenlargely ineffective at raising this rate. This study tested the effect of targeted text messages tolow-income, urban parents on the flu vaccination of their children.It looked at parents of 9,213 children and adolescents aged sixmonths to 18 years who were receiving care at four community-basedclinics in the United States during the 2010-2011 flu season. Half of the families received usual care, which included anautomated telephone reminder to the parents to have their childvaccinated for the flu. The other half also received up to fiveweekly text messages providing educational information andinstructions on where vaccinations were available. The first three text messages provided general information aboutvaccines, including vaccine safety information. They alsoemphasized the seriousness of flu infections, with messagestailored to the age of the child or adolescent. The last twomessages informed families about dates for Saturday flu vaccineclinics, which were held weekly from October 2010 through March2011. As with any new technology, there were some bugs in the system.Around 14 percent of the parents never received the text messages,either because of a wrong phone number, messaging incompatibilityor other reason. When telephones first began to be installed in doctors' offices,there were some hiccups that made phones seem more of a nuisancethan a technological advance. Today, it's hard to imagine adoctor's office without one. Text messaging's ability to reachlarge numbers of people at low cost offers as many possibilitiesfor improving public health and for simplifying doctor-patientcommunication as the telephone did. A major challenge in realizingthis potential is likely to be designing text messages that areeffective. That will probably require a lot more fine-tuning thanfixing the technical glitches will. An article on the study appears in The Journal of the AmericanMedical Association (JAMA). I am an expert from skf16.com, while we provides the quality product, such as China Self-Aligning Ball Bearing , China Cylindrical Roller Bearing , Spherical Roller Bearing,and more.
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