The percentages were better in all three groups when it came to receipt of the vaccine dose within 4 months of the due date. But the value was still higher among girls whose parents signed up for reminders, at 65%, than among those whose parents did not sign up, at 51%, and the historic controls, at 53% (P = .01).
In logistic regression analyses that controlled for type of insurance and type of clinic used for care (which differed across groups), girls whose parents signed up for text reminders were 2.03 times more likely than were the girls whose parents didn’t sign up and 1.83 times more likely than the historic control girls were to receive their next HPV vaccine dose within 1 month of the due date (P = .003 and .002, respectively).
Dr. Kharbanda said that the program could potentially be sustained without any additional funding, but there are ongoing costs associated with the personnel needed for monitoring. "Any time you are sending out text messages, you want to have somebody available to respond if the parent writes back ‘Help!’ or something else," she explained.
The infrastructure developed for the study also can be adapted for other purposes, she noted. For example, the research team has since used the platform to promote uptake of the flu vaccine and to recall parents whose child had to temporarily skip a Haemophilus influenza type B vaccine because of the shortage.
Results of the HPV study have recently been published in Vaccine (2011;29:2537-41).
Dr. Kharbanda reported that Vaughn I. Rickert, Psy.D., one of the study’s coinvestigators, is a consultant to Sanofi Pasteur and receives research funding from and sits on the advisory board of Merck.