It's all about making medicine more mobile.
Stephanie Harris gets a lot of text messages.
It's her way of communicating with friends and family.
So when she was four months pregnant with her daughter, Desiere, she signed up for a government program called /*text4baby*/.
"It just starting sending me random messages that I would need to know as my pregnancy progressed," she said.
Designed to reach mothers who may not have access to a lot of prenatal information, text4baby sends three free text messages a week to expectant and new moms.
The texts provide timely and important information pertaining to the woman's pregnancy and her baby's first months of life.
The text messages contain information on critical health topics like immunization, nutrition, oral health, safe sleep and a variety of other issues.
The program is nationwide and is so successful that public health researchers believe texting health messages may help other groups, who don't normally seek regular checkups, stay healthier.
People who are of lower income, who may be on medicaid, or may be not have regular health insurance, tend to be those who are most likely to use text messaging.
