Original articleA Sex Risk Reduction Text-Message Program for Young Adult Females Discharged From the Emergency Department
Section snippets
Study design
In this pilot study, a randomized control group design was used to assess whether an SMS program would decrease sex risk behaviors at 3-month follow-up relative to a no-intervention control group. Recruitment occurred between September 2011 and April 2012 at a single urban level I trauma and tertiary care hospital ED in western Pennsylvania. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Pittsburgh. The trial was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (number NCT01548183
Results
A total of 392 young adult female ED patients were approached over a period of 6 months, with patient flow exhibited in Figure 1. Forty-two percent of young adult female ED patients screened positive for both hazardous drinking and risky sex behaviors, among whom 51% were excluded from participation and 15% were not interested in trial participation. Demographic characteristics and sex risk behavior characteristics of the sample are shown in Table 1 for the 52 participants enrolled in the
Discussion
This study demonstrated that an automated, interactive SMS program may be useful to track sex risk behavior over time, deliver sex risk behavioral support messages, and promote goal setting to reduce risk for sexually transmitted diseases among at-risk young adults being discharged from the ED. Although we were not able to show a statistically significant difference in the sex risk outcomes between control and intervention group at 3 months, we were able to show relative positive changes in
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Jack Doman in the Office of Academic Computing at the Western Psychiatric Institute at the University of Pittsburgh for all computer programming support. B.S. is supported by an EMF-Century Council grant, A.A. is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program, and D.B.C. is supported by R01AA016482 and P50DA05605.
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Declaration of conflicts: The authors report no conflicts of interest.