Comparing reach and engagement of a novel text message intervention between English– and Spanish–speaking caregivers
研究比较了英语和西班牙语使用者在出院后接收食品资源短信干预的覆盖和参与度，发现西班牙语使用者更常点击链接和回复调查，但较少使用信息搜索资源。
Background: Text messaging may offer health systems a low-cost, user-friendly method to provide social resource information at hospital discharge.Assessing equitable reach and engagement is paramount prior to wide-scale implementation.Objective: To compare reach and engagement of a novel, text message intervention to address Food Insecurity (FI) between English-and Spanish-speaking caregivers.Methods: We conducted a one-year prospective pilot to evaluate a novel, automated text messaging system designed to deliver geographically-tailored food resource information to families with FI after hospital discharge.English-and Spanish-speaking caregivers of hospitalized children with a positive FI screen documented during routine clinical care were included.Caregivers received a food resource text message 1 day and 4 days after discharge and two interactive text message surveys.Primary outcomes were systemcollected measures of reach and engagement.Among survey respondents, caregiver-reported measures of reach and engagement were also measured.We compared outcomes by language using Chi-Squared tests.We also conducted semistructured interviews with 20 English-and 11 Spanishspeaking caregivers to understand intervention usability and acceptability.Results: Of 190 caregivers, 134 (71%) spoke English and 56 (29%) spoke Spanish.There were no differences in system-or caregiver-reported reach by language.As compared to Englishspeaking caregivers, Spanish-speaking caregivers more frequently engaged by clicking the FindHelp link (49% vs. 32%, p = 0.028) and responding to follow-up surveys (67% vs. 45%, p = 0.009), but less frequently used the information to search for food resources (68 vs. 93%, p = 0.021).In interviews, Spanishspeaking caregivers expressed mistrust in information received from a text message and preference for discussing resources with someone.Conclusion: Our text message intervention for FI equitably reached English-and Spanish-speaking caregivers.Spanishspeaking caregivers may need additional interpersonal contact by phone or in person to use the resources provided.