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. In addition: SexINFO has been lauded in the U.S. and globally, having received a Webby award in the mobile category, the Full Circle Fund Technology award, and a Grassroots Techie award. ISIS has published in the American Journal of Public Health, and SexINFO has been written-up in the Aspen Institute Report on Mobile Phones and Civic Engagement and the UN Foundation/Vodafone Report on Wireless Technology for Social Change. We have presented at many conferences including Health 2.0, MobileActive, NetTuesdays, and the Society for Adolescent Medicine. In the first 25 weeks of the pilot, there were more than 4500 inquiries; 2500 of which led to access to more information and referrals. The top 3 messages accessed were: (1) “what 2 do if ur condom broke”; (2) “2 find out about STDs”; and (3) “if u think ur pregnant”. To assess the demographic characteristics of SexINFO users who accessed sexual healthcare, ISIS' public health partner conducted surveys of a convenience sample of patients in 3 clinics to which users were referred in the text messages. Anonymous data regarding sexual behaviors and SexINFO awareness and use from 322 patients aged 12 to 24 years was collected. Consistent positive associations were found between demographic risk factors for STIs and SexINFO awareness. African American youth were more likely to report awareness, compared with all other races and youth living in geographic target areas were significantly more likely to be aware than those outside the target areas.

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