Raising Health Awareness in Rural Communities: A Randomized Experiment in Bangladesh and India
在孟加拉国和印度农村，通过电话传播新冠健康信息比短信更能提升人们的健康意识和合规行为，且对女性效果更持久。
Abstract Delivering validated information to rural areas is a major challenge in low-income countries. In this paper, we study information provision 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.