Get the Msg! Information for generation text

'Hippy crack', 'yabba', 'jets' and 'goop'. You'd be challenged to find these wild words in the Oxford Dictionary, but you can easily find them and their meanings in Get the Msg! We explain our text message-based drug information service.

Launched in August 2006 as a short-term pilot supported by Vodafone, Get the Msg! is now a permanent part of our information service, and is available free to all mobile phone users.

Get the Msg! provides free, factual and honest health and safety information about common legal and illegal drugs. Users text the name of a substance to DRUG (3784) and receive a short health and safety message back, with links to the Drug Foundation website and a direct referral to the Alcohol Drug Helpline.

The service is aimed at young people. It's particularly attractive because users can send and receive messages discretely and confidentially in different social settings at any time of the day.

During the pilot we sent over 38,000 text messages, sourced from the database of 36 common substances, with over 900 slang, street and commonly misspelled terms. The most frequent requests (in order) relate to amphetamines/methamphetamine, cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy LSD and heroin. Alcohol, tobacco and party pills are lower on the list, receiving fewer requests than magic mushrooms.

It may have taken us a while to wake up to this new technology, but mobile phones and their short-message-service functions have been in use by the health sector for some time. Providers are using text messaging to remind people about appointments, provide support to those quitting smoking, send health promotion messages, and even (for shy people) to inform partners of sexual infections!

The effectiveness of text message services in healthcare settings has been recently reviewed by Dr Rifat Atun, Director of the Centre for Health Management at Tanaka Business School, Imperial College, London.

The report - The role of mobile phones in increasing accessibility and efficiency in healthcare - notes the large penetration mobile phones have made into many populations, and their acceptance and high usage especially among young people. The report emphasises that text technology offers enormous opportunities to enhance communication with traditionally excluded groups in ways that could improve their access to health care.

That message has been adopted by a number of health providers in New Zealand. The Ministry of Health is developing the Stop Smoking by Mobile Phone (STOMP) service to support youth quitting smoking. STOMP sends text messages containing quitting tips, quizzes and polls throughout the day to users, and has shown great success at a pilot level. The AIDS Foundation operates Safe Sex TXT, which provides information about safe sex, HIV, sexually transmitted infections and other health issues for gay, bisexual and bicurious men. Users text questions and receive answers from the Foundation's Gay Men's Health Service.

Get the Msg! and other txt services demonstrate new ways of getting through to populations traditionally hard to reach. ATEOTD it's up to health providers to trial a bit of innovation - it has certainly worked for us!

Go here for common questions about Get the Msg!