Posted: 5/6/2015
Parkland promotes program locally to improve prenatal care, infant health
Dallas has a lot to boast about – the five-time Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys, the biggest Ferris wheel in the western hemisphere and the nation’s most state-of-the-art public hospital, for example.
But Dallas County falls short when it comes to prenatal care rates, ranking among the lowest in Texas with 43.2 percent of women receiving late or no prenatal care. The Healthy People 2020 goal of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for women to receive prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy is 77.9 percent. Parkland Health & Hospital System is bucking the trend, with more than 97 percent of pregnant patients receiving prenatal care, according to Paula Turicchi, administrator, Women & Infants Specialty Health (WISH) at Parkland.
“But there are many women in the Dallas community still not receiving prenatal care and education,” Turicchi said.
Lack of access to health information, medical care and poverty are the leading causes for premature birth, infant mortality and birth defects, according to the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition. The group is part of a public/private partnership that created a nationwide service called “Text4baby” to address the need for better health information for expectant and new mothers.
Supported locally by Dallas Healthy Start, a program of Parkland’s WISH division,Text4baby provides free health messages on a variety of topics critical to maternal and child health during a woman’s pregnancy and the first year of the baby’s life.
New mother Meshayla Brown, 19, Dallas, signed up for Text4baby messaging after learning about it last fall during a regular prenatal check-up at Parkland’s Oak West Women’s Health Center. Her first child, a healthy baby boy named Jhayden, was born in late November.
“Getting the texts helped me during my pregnancy, educating me about good nutrition and foods to eat and teaching me about how my baby was developing at different stages,” Brown said. “I recommend it for new mothers because I learned a lot.”
“That’s why we support Text4baby in Dallas County,” Turicchi said. “It’s an innovative service that provides free health messages to women like Meshayla who are most in need of the information.”
Text4baby sends text messages to pregnant women and new moms on topics like prenatal care, baby health, parenting, immunization, birth defects prevention, nutrition, car seat safety, injury prevention, exercise and more. The text messages are timed to the pregnant woman’s due date and continue through the first year of the baby’s life.
Women and families can sign up for the service by texting BABY (or BEBE for Spanish) to 511411.
The Text4baby app provides an additional way for participants to access key information beyond the character limit of text messages. As a complementary tool to the texts, the free app offers additional content and interactive features that enhance the overall Text4baby experience. You can download the Text4baby app for Apple or Android devices.
Research shows that more than 85 percent of Americans own a cell phone and 72 percent of cell users send or receive text messages.
Dallas County Healthy Start promotes Text4baby on the Parkland website and serves as the lead Text4baby ambassador for the community, assisting local agencies and organizations that support the program. Free messaging services are provided by participating mobile operators nationwide.
Dallas Healthy Start seeks to reduce infant deaths, pre-term and low-weight births. The program offers services in seven ZIP codes that have the highest rates of infant deaths in Dallas County. According to the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies coalition, each year in the U.S. more than 500,000 babies are born prematurely and an estimated 28,000 children die before their first birthday. The infant mortality rate in the U.S. is one of the highest in the industrialized world and for the first time since the 1950s, that rate is on the rise. The infant mortality rate in Dallas County is higher than the Texas’ average.
“Text4baby provides valuable information to women in a convenient, free and easy way, ensuring that more babies in Dallas County can be given a healthy start in life,” said Rebecca Shoemaker, Assistant Program Coordinator of Fetal and Infant Mortality Review Program at Parkland.
Learn more about Text4baby and Dallas Healthy Start programs.