Emerging Practice

Text4Baby & SoonerCare

State/Jurisdiction: Oklahoma
Setting: Clinical
Population: Infant Women & Maternal
Topic Area: Health Promotion & Communication Mental Health & Substance Use Reproductive Health
NPMs: NPM 1: Well-Woman Visit NPM 2: Low-Risk Cesarean Delivery NPM 4: Breastfeeding NPM 5: Safe Sleep NPM 14.1: Smoking – Pregnancy NPM 14.2: Smoking – Household NPM 15: Adequate Insurance

Text4baby is the nation’s largest and only free mobile health messaging service for pregnant women and mothers with infants under age one. Oklahoma ranks poorly in many key maternal and child health outcomes including prematurity, tobacco use among pregnant women, late entry to prenatal care and infant mortality. The Oklahoma Health Care Authority (OHCA), is the single state agency that administers the Oklahoma Medicaid program (SoonerCare). OHCA is committed to improving the health outcomes of mothers and babies and recognizes the importance of connecting pregnant women and new mothers to valuable information through the Text4baby mobile health service. In October 2014, OHCA became the first and only state Medicaid agency to implement an automatic notification process for SoonerCare members to easily opt-in to receive Text4baby messages. Approximately 30,000 pregnant women and SoonerCare mothers with infants were sent a text message with information about Text4baby and how to opt-in directly through the text. More than 5,000 women enrolled into the service after receiving this message. This process was achieved via a Data Use Agreement between OHCA and Voxiva, the technology company that co-operates Text4baby with Zero to Three. The agreement enabled the entities to share an electronic file containing phone numbers of newly enrolled pregnant women and infants on SoonerCare.


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Implementation Handout
Oklahoma Case Study


CONTACT INFORMATION
Oklahoma Health Care Authority (OHCA)
Daryn Kirkpatrick
Daryn.Kirkpatrick@okhca.org

Practice Website