In response to rising STD rates among African American youth in San Francisco, US, ISIS developed SEXINFO, a sexual health text messaging service. SEXINFO is an education, awareness, and referral service accessed by texting "SEXINFO" to a 5-digit number from U.S. based wireless phones. Community organizations, religious groups, and health agencies assisted with project development. Based upon simple SMS text messaging, the ability to impact large numbers of youth with referrals to local clinical and support services via something they "keep in their pocket" has tremendous potential for impact throughout the world -- economic impact, health impact on other disease areas (HIV/TB/Malaria), as well as health impact in the areas of reproductive health and gender violence.
SexINFO International will be able to locate and mobilize youth in the major urban areas of each continent to empower them to take charge of their own sexual health. Think of places like Kathmandu, Delhi, Mumbai, Kampala, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lima, Buenos Aires, Mexico City. Each city has large numbers of sexually active urban youth at risk for HIV, STDs, unplanned pregnancies, and gender violence. While these youth may be disenfranchised in many ways, when they do have monies, the first thing they do is spend it on cell phones (SIM cards, mobile access). Cell phones are their connections, their life lines, their support. To scale SexINFO globally, ISIS will follow our best practices model of engaging the community, SexINFO will gather small groups of these youth to understand their particular needs, language, and cultural norms; engage the local health officials and important community members to discuss and advise; partner with technology carriers and providers (working through existing relationships with HipCricket - US Based - and AdIQ - London Based); develop a comprehensive social marketing plan, and partner with local academic researchers to develop and implement the evaluation plan.