Texting Atopic Dermatitis Patients to Optimize Learning and EASI Scores

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common, chronic, and debilitating disease that tends to present in children under age 2 and has a waxing and waning course. Poor adherence to treatment is the primary preventable contributor towards adverse outcomes such as infection, hospitalization, permanent disfigurement, and disruptions in normal childhood psychological development. The burden of care for these patients often falls upon parents, who may have difficulty incorporating the necessary daily treatments into the family's lifestyle. Thus, investigating ways of improving adherence could have a significant impact on a patient's long term prognosis and the family's ability to understand and adjust to the demands of AD.Text message reminders with embedded health literacy information have been shown to improve vaccination rates in children and caregivers have reported increased satisfaction with this means of communication.

This study aims to assess whether text message reminders with information about AD are an effective way to improve treatment adherence and provide disease specific information to caregivers of children with AD. The measure of AD severity will be the Eczema Area and Severity Index (EASI) score. Health literacy with regard to AD will be assessed via in-office survey.This study will involve children age 0-6 with newly diagnosed AD and their primary caregivers. The subjects will be randomized to standard care or text message reminder group. All study participants will be asked to complete a survey after their initial evaluation and after their follow up visit on the same day they are in the office. The text message group will receive text messages with information and treatment reminders. All participants will receive the standard of care with regard to AD.

If this study demonstrates that text message reminders can improve EASI scores in AD patients it could lead to a significant change in how these patients are managed. Fewer complications from episodic flares, infections, and other sequelae may lessen the burden of this disease for both patients and their caregivers. Text messaging is an inexpensive, noninvasive, and broadly applicable tool that is worth studying for the purpose of improving treatment adherence and disease literacy.

Inclusion criteria

• New clinical diagnosis of atopic dermatitis
• New patient to Columbia University Medical Center, Department of Dermatology
• Caregiver has mobile that can send/receive text messages

Exclusion criteria

• Age over 7 years
• Caregiver is not fluent English speaker
• Those patients in which a definitive diagnosis of atopic dermatitis cannot be made
• Any individual who declines participation