Penn Study: Text Messaging Shows Promise in Reaching Unvaccinated Patients

PennMedicine News (June 13th, 2022) – Automated text messaging was as effective as direct phone calls in getting unvaccinated patients to seek out a COVID-19 shot, according to a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania that demonstrated the possibility of lower-cost alternatives to traditional patient outreach. The research was published today in JAMA Network Open.

“The take-away is that the text arms of our study were comparable to the phone-only arm, but the text messaging is less resource-intensive since a live call center only needs to talk to those who are already interested instead of making cold calls to everyone on the list,” said the study’s lead author, Shivan Mehta, MD, an assistant professor of Medicine and the associate chief innovation officer at Penn Medicine

Penn Study: Text Messaging Shows Promise in Reaching Unvaccinated Patients – Penn Medicine