The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is to pursue opportunities to forge a global public-private partnership to make a new text-based anti-smoking programme in the US available to other countries.  The initiative is one of the US government’s recommendations to support health-based text messaging and mobile health programmes. It announced two new anti-smoking SMS campaigns for the US  called QuitNowTXT, which the HHS is interested in sharing internationally, and SmokeFreeTXT, which is aimed at teenagers and young adults in the States.

The announcement also shows the influence of a public-private model that has become increasingly popular with SMS-based health campaigns. It also demonstrates the influence of Voxiva’s popular US text-based service called text4baby whose CEO Justin Sims was recently interviewed by Mobile Health Live. Sims talked about the central role for public-private partnerships in his company’s approach. Voxiva has itself attracted interest from the White House and offers two additional SMS-based anti-smoking services of its own:text2quit and quit4baby.

Among the backers for the HHS initiative are Johnson & Johnson, who is also a key sponsor of Voxiva’s text4baby service. Other backers for the government’s initiative are the mHealth Alliance, World Medical Association, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the Center for Global Health at the George Washington University.