It is hypothesized that delivering short messages (SMS) to pregnant women can improve maternal and newborn health outcomes. This pilot offers mothers-to-be in rural China free daily short messages (SMS) via cell phone. The aim is to advise them on (a) good household prenatal practices (GHPP) and (b) care seeking (CS) in order to improve the quality of life for mothers and newborns.

Factorial quasi-randomization is utilized to compare two groups of interventions (i.e., GHPP and CS) as well as to compare these individual interventions with a combination of the interventions. It is also possible that distinct treatments have interaction effects, and we plan to test for this. Policymakers are interested in using different strategies to enhance neonatal health. For example, the bank of SMS developed by our team is a combination of several components: reminders for regular checkups, information on GHPP, and information on CS. From a policy perspective, the evaluation of the full bank of SMS may be sufficient for the government to decide whether or not to scale up the full bank of SMS. However, to understand maternal behavior and, for policy purposes, to understand which components in the bank of SMS should be scaled up, it is important to disentangle which component contributes most to final neonatal health. Taken together, are all the components of the bank of SMS effective in changing maternal behavior and enhancing neonatal health? Which mechanisms are at play, good household prenatal care, care seeking in pregnancy, or both?

There were two inclusion criteria: Local pregnant women must 1) own a cell phone in the household, and 2) visit a MCHC for antenatal care during pregnancy.