Disha Kumar, BS, BA1,2, Monisha Arya, MD, MPH3,4
1Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Houston, Texas 77005, USA; 2School of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, Texas 77030, USA; 3Department of Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases and Section of Health Services Research, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, Texas 77030, USA; 4Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness and Safety, Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center 2002 Holcombe Blvd (Mailstop 152), Houston, Texas 77030, USA
Corresponding Author: disha.kumar@bcm.edu
Journal MTM 5:2:38–43, 2016
doi: 10.7309/jmtm.5.2.6
Background: For health campaigns, pretesting the channel of message delivery and process evaluation is important to eventual campaign effectiveness. We conducted a pilot study to pretest text messaging as a mHealth channel for traditionally underserved patients.
Aims: The primary objectives of the research were to assess 1) successful recruitment of these patients for a text message study and 2) whether recruited patients would engage in a process evaluation after receiving the text message.
Methods: Recruited patients were sent a text message and then called a few hours later to assess whether they had received, read, and remembered the sent text message.
Results: We approached twenty patients, of whom fifteen consented to participate. Of these consented participants, ten (67%) engaged in the process evaluation and eight (53%) were confirmed as receiving, reading, and remembering the text message.
Conclusion: We found that traditionally underserved and under-researched patients can be recruited to participate in a text message study, and that recruited patients would engage in a process evaluation after receiving the text message.
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