When I typed in health and text messaging I have realized that they have used this technology tool to help out with a variety of things such as helping the HIV/AIDS in South Africa to helping young teens to quit smoking.
This is a great tool to get out the news about health problems. As far as the HIV/AIDS alerts go, it was said that about 90 percent of people in Africa use some kind of technology and get these text messages when they need more minutes on their prepaid phone. When they send a message that they need more minutes then they get a message back that allows them to get the hotline for HIV/AIDS help. They said in the article that this helped raise phone calls for help about 200 percent. This isn’t the first time that they have used this to spread the word about health care issues, but for some reason this campaign has been more successful than the others. The consequences of using this are that it is most likely to not reach the people that need it the most. Many under privileged people don’t have cell phones in order to get these text messages. I feel like they are the ones that need to be informed the most. However, it does help out majority of the people that do have cell phones. It doesn’t have a lot of information and people must give the effort to call and get help.
The second article I chose was text messaging helping teens quit smoking. This study was put together in New Zealand and showed that the rates for teen smokers with the average age of 25 had an easier time to quit smoking after receiving text messages daily for five months straight. If they quit, the teen received a month of free personal text messaging. This study may have had some miscalculations because it was a self reporting study. They want to start using it in different countries such as China, where there are 50 million young smokers. They also stated that it is going to help further the use of text messages as a popular method for public health interventions.
I really liked looking at these articles but I really want to see more of this use in America. Both of these are in two different countries and they seem to make a difference so why haven’t we tried this sort of promotion in the United States yet? So many people my age right now are using text messages; I think that we are the only generation that fully understands how to use text messaging. It would be a great way to reach the younger population because we are so technology savvy but on the other had I feel like many pare undereducated about health care and where to get help. But then once again you don’t reach everyone, especially the people that really need it.
Monday, November 17, 2008
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1 comments:
I completely agree with Cindy, why aren't we using this technology in the United States? I also found the STOMP program online and its proven to be very useful for people within the younger populations. My younger sister is so "text happy" I am also certain that if she were to start receiving texts regarding her health and positive health behaviors she would listen to them.
However one thing to consider is that it is not only the younger populations that need these important health messages. Is there a way we as a society could reach out to the older populations via text messaging. Possibly teach them how to use this tool. Just an thought that probably needs to be addressed.
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