Skip to main content
STI 2024 Prevention Conference Main banner
Final Program


Abstract Book
Icon Legend
This session is not in your schedule.
This session is in your schedule. Click again to remove it.

Poster Session II: STI Interventions

(P128) USING TEXTING FOR COMMUNICABLE DISEASE OUTREACH: COVID-19 TO GONORRHEA

Wednesday, September 18, 2024
4:15 PM - 5:15 PM EST
Background:
Automated texts generated from our surveillance system during the COVID-19 pandemic provided control measure information and automated anonymous contact notification, and linked people to resources, vaccine and treatment. Our goal was to transition this functionality to be useable for other urgent outreach settings, such as an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, and for non-emergency use to support access to treatment and partner notification in North Carolina.

Methods:
COVID-19 case outreach and contact tracing records were reviewed to understand what kind of engagement we might expect. We worked with our legal team to establish this process in a non-emergency setting. We created new fields to support gonorrhea texting, our automated contact tracing process was copied for gonorrhea and new landing pages with gonorrhea information were created.

Results:
COVID-19 outcomes demonstrated that at least 80% of people with a valid phone number received a delivered text; between July 15-December 15, 2021, 1% of people with a delivered text (5,824) entered 10,733 contacts (1.8 contacts per person). A protocol for gonorrhea case outreach without prior opt-in was established. Risks were defined and law supporting text outreach to control communicable diseases without prior opt-in was identified and reviewed. We worked with our texting provider agency (Twilio) to establish public health texting without prior opt-in. We constructed our automated process for outreach including links to testing and treatment, the ability to enter contacts for automated anonymous notification, and an optional follow-up survey to collect risk information in our contact tracing software.  The pilot is expected to run for three months starting in April 2024 and send texts to at least 500 people during the pilot.

Conclusion:
In a public health emergency, public health agencies must be able to use texting as a tool for outreach without prior opt-in; gonorrhea outreach can serve as a useful pilot for this process.