Part of the SNAP-Ed Strategies & Interventions Toolkit.*
Text2BHealthy is a social marketing and direct education text message-based intervention designed to stimulate positive behavior change in parents with respect to grocery shopping habits, fruit and vegetable consumption and physical activity. Text2BHealthy engages low-income parents of elementary school children by sending text messages which link parents to their school and community. Parents receive about 2 text messages per week connecting parents with nutrition education in the classroom, identifying community events related to nutrition and physical activity that are free or low-cost, highlighting grocery store specials/recipes and physical activity ideas to try at home with their family.
Text2BHealthy has evolved and adapted messages to support statewide policies, systems, and environmental changes taking place at all collaborating school sites.
The evaluation of Text2BHealthy has evolved to be part of a comprehensive school-wide evaluation to explore the impacts of multifaceted SNAP-Ed interventions. Diverse groups of respondents, including parents and teachers at sites with comprehensive SNAP-Ed programming complete electronic pre and post test surveys to assess individual and environmental-level changes that have occurred throughout the course of the year.
Text2BHealthy has been recognized in the following reports:
- Text2BHealthy was highlighted in the Best Practices in Nutrition Education for Low-Income Audiences document published in cooperation with USDA FNS, USDA NIFA and Colorado State University.
- Text2BHealthy was featured on the USDA Blog – Partnership, Technology Help Forge a Healthier Generation
- Text2BHealthy was awarded the 2015 Priester Award for Health Education Innovation
*SNAP-Ed Strategies & Interventions: An Obesity Prevention Toolkit for States is a compilation of interventions. The toolkit was developed by USDA's Food and Nutrition Service, The Association of SNAP-Ed Nutrition Education Administrators (ASNNA), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for Training and Research Translation (Center TRT), and the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR), a partnership between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes for Health (NIH), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the USDA. It is designed and updated to help state SNAP-Ed administrative and implementing agencies identify evidence-based obesity prevention programs and policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) strategies and interventions to include in their SNAP-Ed plans.