TY - JOUR
T1 - Raising health awareness in rural communities
T2 - a randomized experiment in Bangladesh and India
AU - Siddique, Abu
AU - Rahman, Tabassum
AU - Pakrashi, Debayan
AU - Islam, Asad
AU - Ahmed, Firoz
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - Delivering validated information to rural areas is a major chal-lenge in low-income countries. In this paper, we study information provi-sion to rural communities in the context of a global outbreak of an infectious disease—COVID-19. Two weeks after the initial lockdown in March 2020, we conducted a randomized experiment in rural Bangladesh and India to disseminate health information over the phone. We find that relative to information provided via SMS, phone calls can significantly improve people’s awareness and compliance with health guidelines. We also find compliance to be substantially higher among women, which also persists after three months of the campaign.
AB - Delivering validated information to rural areas is a major chal-lenge in low-income countries. In this paper, we study information provi-sion to rural communities in the context of a global outbreak of an infectious disease—COVID-19. Two weeks after the initial lockdown in March 2020, we conducted a randomized experiment in rural Bangladesh and India to disseminate health information over the phone. We find that relative to information provided via SMS, phone calls can significantly improve people’s awareness and compliance with health guidelines. We also find compliance to be substantially higher among women, which also persists after three months of the campaign.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85183879219&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1162/rest_a_01182
DO - 10.1162/rest_a_01182
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85183879219
SN - 0034-6535
VL - 106
SP - 638
EP - 654
JO - The Review of Economics and Statistics
JF - The Review of Economics and Statistics
IS - 3
ER -