Low-income urban Latino parents' perceptions of immunization text reminders

Abstract

Objective: Identify perceptions regarding benefits of and barriers to receiving text messages for immunization reminders and preferred content for such text messages.

Design: Structured interviews.

Setting: Outpatient pediatric resident and faculty clinic.

Participants: A convenience sample of 54 low-income urban Latino parents of children aged < or = 2 years.

Main outcome measures: Parent perspectives on text message reminders.

Results: Most respondents were female (70%), married (63%), and fluent only in Spanish (89%). Most (83%) had a health literacy score in the adequate range. All (100%) reported being interested in receiving immunization reminders by text message, and 81% reported being willing to receive general appointment reminders by text message. Parents made 72 comments regarding benefits of text message immunization reminders. The most common sub-category was usefulness of the reminders (53%). These comments reflected participants' busy schedules and the beneficial nature of text messages in reminding parents of appointments. Fifty-six comments were provided regarding barriers to receiving text message reminders. Most comments (77%) indicated no identifiable barriers. Twenty percent described barriers related to technology, such as costs or lack of text messaging service. Parents generated 108 comments regarding preferred content of reminders. The topics most frequently identified were appointment date and time (32%), names of the vaccines (19%), and the child's name (11%).

Conclusions: Low-income Latino parents perceive text message immunization reminders as a feasible alternative to more traditional forms of communication.