Can a Text Messaging Education Program Increase the Rate and Duration of Breastfeeding?

The Yale School of Public Health will conduct a study to determine if a text messaging intervention program can increase breastfeeding rates among new, low-income mothers. The study, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will involve 250 new mothers who have enrolled in the Women, Infants, and Children Supplemental Nutrition Program.

The program will involve breastfeeding education by text message for young women before they become pregnant, during their pregnancies, and after they give birth. While about two-thirds of the new mothers in the Women, Infants, and Children Supplemental Nutrition Program breastfeed, many stop before their infants are three months old. The goal of the new program is to increase participation and the duration of breastfeeding.

Nurit Harari, a physician and a former Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Yale and one of the leaders of the research effort, stated, “There is a need to reach out and improve breastfeeding support among low-income mothers. We have learned that many moms prefer communicating by text message. It has become a much more reliable way to consistently communicate with new moms.”

Dr. Harari is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the Baylor University College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.