­Texting to Promote Public Health: What Health Departments Should Know About the Telephone Consumer Protection Act

Overview

Text messaging can provide health departments with an efficient means of sharing timely public health information such as guidance, announcements, and emergency alerts. While texting can be an effective tool for protecting the public’s health, it raises important privacy issues that health departments must consider when developing texting initiatives. This fact sheet examines one piece of that legal framework: the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and regulations implemented by the Federal Communications Commission that govern certain kinds of texting.