Announcing the Text4baby Toolkit for Employers: A free addition to your maternity education and benefits communication Feb 1, 2012 By Jennifer Benz

• Each year in the United States, more than 500,000 babies are born prematurely.
• Approximately 28,000 children die before their first birthday.

• Preterm births are one of the most expensive complications of pregnancy in the United States.
• Nearly half of the total $26 billion annual cost of preterm births falls to employers and other private insurers.

Good news:
Thanks to the power of technology, we can target health education to broader audiences and tackle such huge issues with just the push of a few cellphone buttons.

From the moment we heard about text4baby—a free, bilingual health education text messaging service for pregnant women and new moms—we were committed! We wanted to join forces in providing critical information to help moms give their babies the best possible start in life. And we loved how text4baby used a common form of technology to achieve this.

In the United States alone, over 85 percent of Americans own cell phones, and 72 percent of cell phone users send or receive text messages. Recognizing the impact that text messaging could have on reducing the number of preterm births and preventing some childhood illnesses, the national text4baby program was launched by an unprecedented public-private partnership. (This approach is so unique that we’ll be sharing their story at South by Southwest this Spring.)

And knowing the value of this service to employers and their employees and families, we created the Text4baby Toolkit for Employers pro bono. This toolkit is a free, easy-to-use resource that allows employers to promote text4baby to their employees, encouraging use of this beneficial service.

This free, downloadable resource provides employers with ready-to-use templates that can be easily customized and integrated into any company’s current benefits communications programs. The full toolkit includes suggestions for promoting text4baby and instructions for accessing free, print-ready promotional posters and referral cards, in English and Spanish.

The following sample templates are provided in Microsoft Word for quick customizing.

• Program information sheet
• Benefits guide content
• Newsletter/intranet article
• Wallet card content
• Tweet

Text4baby’s goal is to enroll 1 million users by the end of 2012. Employers, you could play a huge role in making this happen. Download the free, user-friendly toolkit, and get your employees onboard. This is a simple effort—and a helpful, free addition to your benefits 
communication—that offers a tremendous potential payoff.

For more information or to download the free Text4baby Toolkit for Employers, click here or visit text4baby.org.