Text messages increase healthy behaviors in India

Text messages sent twice weekly to adults in India, advising them to exercise and eat healthier in an effort to prevent diabetes, increased these health behaviors, according to a press release from Northwestern University.

The text messages were sent by Arogya World, a global health nonprofit organization, in partnership with Nokia in 2012-2013, to 1 million people in India. Researchers surveyed recipients of these messages (n = 982) and compared them to a control group (n = 943). Participants reported fruit, vegetable and fat consumption, as well as exercise at baseline and at 6 months.

Researchers found that both the experimental and control groups improved their health behaviors, but 40% more people in the text group improved their health behaviors vs. controls.

This effort was the first to use mobile phones to reach a large number of people from different parts of a large country, according to the release. The initiative has implications for several noncommunicable diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers, for which risk can be lowered through healthy lifestyle changes.

“This shows the potential for even the most basic of mobile phones to be used as a viable tool to deliver public health messages on a large scale across a diverse population,” Angela Fidler Pfammatter, PhD, a research assistant professor in preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in the release. “And you just need a basic mobile phone. This can make an impact.”