Collaborating to develop and test an enhanced text messaging system to encourage health information seeking

The growing importance of the role of the individual in making informed health decisions has spurred efforts to improve health literacy, especially in vulnerable populations characterized by disparities in health status and access to care. As part of this effort, libraries have engaged in outreach activities targeted at specific populations, institutions, and community groups, often involving multidisciplinary partnerships 1–4. These services are aimed at improving both health literacy and health information literacy. The latter is defined by the Medical Library Association as “the set of abilities needed to recognize a health information need, identify likely information sources and use them to retrieve relevant information, assess the quality of the information and its applicability to a specific situation, and analyze, understand, and use the information to make good health decisions” 5. Health information seeking is generally regarded as a component of health literacy 6. The study reported here describes an approach that used enhanced text messages to encourage health information seeking during pregnancy. The study objectives were to develop and test a simple, replicable intervention that would promote successful and satisfying information seeking by guiding users to key resources on topics relevant to their prenatal education and experience. We also wanted to examine how health sciences librarians add value to multidisciplinary teams engaged in health literacy activities. Building upon previous work reported elsewhere 7, our team of faculty, clinical staff, and librarians identified the opportunity for a health literacy intervention at Drexel University's 11th Street Health Services Center, a federally qualified health center that is located in a public housing development and serves a low-income, predominantly minority population.