The National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition is grateful to Johnson & Johnson for its ongoing support of the text4baby program. As the founding sponsor and a key driving force behind the program, Johnson & Johnson provided and continues to provide critical support, allowing us to reach 300,000 individuals in two years and truly bringing to life the value a public-private partnership has in making a positive difference in improving health.

***

by Susan Can, Johnson & Johnson

Today, our partner text4baby comes together with Connecting Kids to Coverage to enhance the suite of free and low-cost health services available to American families. This partnership brings together the nation’s largest mobile health information service and the nation’s largest children’s health insurance program to help all children born in this country get the best possible opportunity for a healthy start in life.

At Johnson & Johnson, we know how important that early start in life can be. For 125 years, the desire to make families healthier and safer has been at the heart of our commitment to improving maternal and child health.

As part of this continued commitment to families and children, Johnson & Johnson has partnered closely with text4baby since its launch in 2010. Text4baby is the largest mobile health offering of its kind, a service which delivers key health messages directly to the mobile phones of new and expectant moms. In addition to educational messages, it has been important for text4baby to connect moms with healthcare resources.

Two years ago we began our partnership with text4baby to support a new model of health education and support for pregnant and new moms. Our role here is clear, and it is not simply as a funder. We work closely with text4baby to bring our deep and varied experience in the healthcare field to this service, supporting text4baby in a multitude of ways because we believe in the model.

Now, we know that the model works; last fall, the first outcomes studies were completed and they showed that text4baby is making a real difference in the health behaviors of its subscribers. Based on these outcomes and our close relationship with text4baby, we are optimistic about the role text4baby can play in supporting continued health behavior changes among American mothers.

But even with all the great work done by text4baby and its current partners, we know that it is not a panacea, and that we in the healthcare community still have work ahead to ensure that American families get the quality start in life that they deserve. Today’s partnership announcement is an important step in the right direction.

We know that the biggest healthcare challenges for many Americans are access to health information and access to care. Therefore, we believe that the long-term partnership announced today will fill a gap that currently exists in family healthcare in this country, by providing continued access to information in the palm of your hand, and easy access to care in the form of free or low-cost children’s health insurance.

The partnership between text4baby and Connecting Kids to Coverage brings together two of the great forces for family health in our country, and will make it easier for moms to learn about their options, access information and care, and take charge of their family's health.

Johnson & Johnson is committed to enhancing family health by supporting mothers and their children, and we are privileged to be part of partnerships like this – strong, meaningful partnerships that clearly see and address so important a need in our country.