Having a quick and easy way to contact health visitors can make all the difference to families. More than 40% of health visiting teams in England have set up ChatHealth, allowing parents and carers to speak to health visitors via confidential text messaging.
Busy parents say they appreciate the convenience of reaching health visitors via ChatHealth. It can often be easier to send a message to ask for advice, particularly for those who find it difficult to talk on the phone.
Feedback from parents:
“Being able to text in a busy day makes it really accessible. There was a speedy and friendly response. We are incredibly lucky to have this as a service.”
Health visitors say setting up a messaging service is a safe and manageable way for small teams to provide advice to lots of families, often using existing skillsets and resources.
Feedback from health visitors who use ChatHealth:
“The use of ChatHealth by parents has grown, which obviously proves that it is a valuable source of communication and access to the health visiting team.”
An iHV report, published in December 2023, highlighted the increased rates of 0–4-year-olds attending accident and emergency departments (A&E). It showed that health visitors, when adequately resourced, can play a key role in managing minor illnesses and providing expert support to families. The report shared a case study on how a health visiting text messaging service helped to reduce A&E attendances.
The latest DHTS Impact Report shows the impact of using ChatHealth to offer health visiting messaging services.
A peer-reviewed paper in the RCN Primary Health Care journal published in June 2025, ‘Implementing a text messaging service for parents and carers of young children’, reviews the widespread evidence and best practice of health visiting services using ChatHealth to communicate with parents.
Set up a ChatHealth messaging service
There are opportunities for health visiting teams to work with the DHTS project team to set up a ChatHealth messaging service. For more information, email [email protected]
About the Digital Health Transformation Service
A dedicated project team of NHS staff, known as the Digital Health Transformation Service (DHTS), work with more than 80 NHS healthcare organisations to implement and support a range of digital health tools including, ChatHealth, HealthWebsites (Health for Under 5s, Health for Kids and Health for Teens) and HealthForms digital health questionnaires.
The team are clinically led and offer project management, marketing and technical expertise to support innovative health teams to successfully adopt digital technology and shared best practice.
