Adolescents with chronic diseases who were allowed to text their doctors were better equipped to manage their own healthcare and more likely to request help at the first sign of problems, a new study found. ‘Give them a voice, and they will talk,’ lead author Dr Jeannie Huang is quoted in [s]Reuters Health[/s] as saying.
‘And that’s really what we want them to do.’ Huang, from the [b]University of California, San Diego[/b], said her study shows that using the Internet and cellphones to communicate with youths has the potential to get them earlier care and improve outcomes.
[link url=http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/20/us-teens-chronic-illness-texting-idUSKBN0E01QK20140520]Full Reuters Health report[/link]
[link url=http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/05/14/peds.2013-2830]Pediatrics abstract[/link]