Short message service usage may improve the public's self-health management: A community-based randomized controlled...

The last decade has witnessed unprecedented growth in mobile phone use. It links millions of previously unconnected people. The ubiquity of mobile phones, which allows for use of the short message service (SMS), offers new and innovative opportunities for disease prevention and health education. SMS usage appears to be a feasible, popular, and effective way of improving health literacy. This study measured the effect of SMS health education on the improvement of health management in Shenzhen, China.

This was a community-based randomized controlled study. A total of 32 communities were randomly chosen out of 320, then about 200 participants were randomly sampled from each selected community. The subjects were equally divided into two groups at random. About half of the participants received health intervention messages via Internet-based SMS for almost a year. The data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistical methods.

The proportion of participants involved in self-health management increased from 30.92% to 38.68% over the year (χ ² = 42.49, p < 0.001) in the intervention group. People with marginal health literacy reported the highest increase (10.92%), while people with low health literacy reported the smallest (5.25%). The control group showed no difference in baseline and final health management proportions (28.02% and 29.64%, p > 0.05). No statistical difference in the prevalence of chronic disease (15.16% and 13.89%, p > 0.05) was found before and after the intervention in the intervention group. The prevalence in the intervention group was lower after the intervention than it was in the control group (17.33%, χ ² = 14.45, p < 0.001).

SMS may be a powerful tool for improving the public's health literacy and health management because it is widely available, popular, affordable, and instant.