Supporting Arizona's efforts to develop community resilience
What is AZHEALTHTXT?
AZHEALTHTXT is a bilingual information-sharing platform that disseminates timely, expert-curated, health information tailored to the unique needs of Arizonans. Our health messaging specifically aims to target three groups: general Arizona community members, individuals living in rural areas, and healthcare providers.
The purpose of this project is to assist Arizona communities stay up to date on health issues and community resources in their area. We cover content ranging from rental assistance, food and water access, housing, substance use, evolving guidance regarding COVID-19 and other emerging diseases, and more!
AZHEALTHTXT, formerly known as AZCOVIDTXT, was developed in collaboration with the Arizona Center for Rural Health as a component of AHEAD AZ, funded by a health disparities CDC grant. Our team is comprised of staff, faculty, and students across multiple University of Arizona disciplines (i.e., medicine, communication, public health, linguistics, and computer science).
Through prioritizing health equity and considering the social determinants of health, we aim to complete the following goals and objectives:
Our Goals:
- Support community members build more resilient communities and remain informed on additional pressing health issues in their area
- Provide personalized health messaging unique to the interests of individual users.
- Increase knowledge about and access to health-related resources for Arizona communities
- Utilize emergency messaging in the event of pressing health issues for timely dissemination of accurate and trusted information.
- For interested subscribers, provide up-to-date COVID-19 prevention, vaccination, and treatment information, as well as highlight social determinants of health which have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our Objectives:
In order to achieve our goals, we plan to:
- Work with community stakeholders through content advisory committees, community advisory boards and partnerships to build trust and ensure that the content we disseminate.
- Support targeted multimodal messaging on pressing, locally-relevant, health topics.
- Aggregate and synthesize information to produce novel, relevant content for users through natural language processing and data scraping techniques.
Resilience
Support rural healthcare workers to build more resilient communities and remain informed on additional pressing health issues in their area.
COVID-19
Assist rural healthcare workers stay up-to-date on continually-evolving COVID-19 information.
Personalized Content
Work toward personalized messaging unique to the interests of individual health care workers and their communities.
Health Communication
Inform rural healthcare workers about how to effectively communicate health information to patients
To achieve our goals, we offer a variety of messaging modalities to fit your preference!
New, expert-curated content is available weekly through:
Text Messaging
Receive 2 or 3 text messages per week, containing relevant, local, health-related content. To sign up to receive weekly texts, follow the two simple steps outlined in the instructions below!
Website Articles
Read more in-depth about a topic of interest! Each week two articles are made available: one provides information specifically for you as rural health providers, and the other gives helpful instructions on how to communicate specific topics more effectively with the individuals you support.
Social Media Posts
View short, helpful posts and graphics that are made available on our AZHEALTHTXT Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter! @azhealthtxt
Infographics
Read or share a number of available infographics that provide a visual representation of pressing, health-related information here on our website.
Sign up for AZHEALTHTXT in two, easy steps:
1. Join AZHEALTHTXT
Text JOIN to (833) 937-2974. You will receive a confirmation text and next steps.
2. Answer a few brief questions
You will be asked to provide your Arizona zip code and complete a brief survey.
This helps us tailor our content to your specific area.
Begin receiving informative text messages!
After you complete the enrollment process, you will begin to receive 2-3 informative text messages per week containing relevant COVID-19 and community resilience information.