Calling for Health: Can Mobile Phones Improve Access to Public Health and Nutrition Programs?

Last registered on May 18, 2020
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Calling for Health: Can Mobile Phones Improve Access to Public Health and Nutrition Programs?
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0005053
Initial registration date
May 16, 2020

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
May 18, 2020, 12:37 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
India
Region
Raipur

Primary Investigator

Name
Charity Moore
Affiliation
Yale University
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Erica Field
PI Affiliation
Duke University
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PI Name
Rohini Pande
PI Affiliation
Yale University
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PI Name
Natalia Rigol
PI Affiliation
Harvard University
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PI Name
Giorgia Barboni
PI Affiliation
University of Warwick
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PI Name
Simone Schaner
PI Affiliation
University of Southern California
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Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2018-08-01
End date
2020-12-31
Keywords
Gender, Health
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Building on a major initiative by the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, which distributed over 2 million smartphones to rural Chhattisgarhi women, we test whether a gender-targeted phone-based information service can raise women’s knowledge and general awareness of appropriate health and nutrition-linked behaviors and increase take-up of health programs. Women enrolled in the service, known as Mor Awaaz, receive weekly phone calls with entertaining, pre-recorded information on good health and nutrition practices. Once a month, we survey women on these topics. The Mor Awaaz study randomizes the number of enrollees within villages to understand the role of peers in outcome changes, and the provision of in-kind incentives to individual enrollees to engage with monthly surveys. To understand the direct impact of health and nutrition messages on related knowledge and behaviors, we build on the Mor Awaaz platform to randomize specific information sent to phone service enrollees over a limited time period. After sending these messages to women, Mor Awaaz enrollees are surveyed through the phone service. To understand knowledge spillovers within villages, we also randomly assign specific message streams at the individual level in one of our treatment arms.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Barboni, Giorgia et al. 2020. "Calling for Health: Can Mobile Phones Improve Access to Public Health and Nutrition Programs?." AEA RCT Registry. May 18. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.5053-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Our study involves multiple interventions. The first intervention is a service known as Mor Awaaz, which sends women weekly “push” calls with pre-recorded information on good health and nutrition practices and relevant government programs. The service also includes regular “pull calls”, where trained enumerators call women to conduct a short survey. More details of the Mor Awaaz RCT are covered in AEA Registry AEARCTR-0005855. Our Calling for Health intervention builds on Mor Awaaz’s regular phone calls to directly test changes in knowledge, awareness and behavior as a result of the information sent through the platform. Calling for Health randomizes the specific information sent to Mor Awaaz enrollees over a limited time period. After sending “push” calls with this information to women, respondents then are surveyed through Mor Awaaz’s pull call system to understand their knowledge and behaviors related to these topics.
Intervention (Hidden)
Intervention Start Date
2019-07-30
Intervention End Date
2020-11-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Our analysis will focus on the following families of primary outcomes:
1. Health and Nutrition Knowledge and Awareness: These outcomes will be structured to ascertain whether Mor Awaaz calls improve women’s understanding of the topics covered by the calls, including good nutrition practices, menstrual hygiene, and knowledge of government health programs.
2. Health and Nutrition-Related Behaviors: Behavioral outcomes will include self-reports of health and nutrition-related behaviors of women and their households, and women’s reports of recent health-seeking behaviors. We will also gather information about women’s enrollment in and use of public health services and programs explained through Mor Awaaz.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
When we collect multiple outcomes for a set of related outcomes, we will aggregate them into standardized indices to address concerns regarding multiple hypothesis testing.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
See Registry AEARCTR-0005855 for details on the Mor Awaaz RCT design.

The Calling for Health intervention takes place in all 180 treatment villages of the randomized control trial for Mor Awaaz, a phone-based service that calls female enrollees to share information on a weekly basis and survey them on a monthly basis. Across all 180 treatment villages, we randomly assign 60 villages each to one of three treatment arms:
1. Group 1: Information Stream A is sent to all Mor Awaaz enrollees in the village.
2. Group 2: Information Stream B is sent to all Mor Awaaz enrollees in the village.
3. Group 3: Mor Awaaz enrollees are randomly assigned such that half of enrolled women within the village receive Stream A information and half of women within the same village receive Stream B information.
Information streams are sent to women for four weeks, and then women are surveyed through Mor Awaaz to collect outcome data.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization was conducted in office using Stata.
Randomization Unit
We conduct village-level randomization across 180 villages (60 villages per treatment arm). Within one treatment arm, we individually randomize half of Mor Awaaz enrollees to one information stream and half to the other.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
212 villages for Mor Awaaz
180 villages for Calling for Health
Sample size: planned number of observations
To understand the impact of the information intervention, we will attempt to collect phone survey data from all Mor Awaaz enrollees in our 180 treatment villages. Each village has an average of 60 enrollees. We also plan to collect information relevant to health knowledge and behaviors in the endline for our Mor Awaaz RCT, which will consists of 3,392 women across 180 Mor Awaaz treatment villages and 32 control villages.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Each of the 3 information intervention treatment arms includes 60 villages. Within the treatment arm (Group 3) where information streams are assigned at the individual level, half of women enrolled in Mor Awaaz are assigned to each information stream.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IFMR
IRB Approval Date
2018-08-13
IRB Approval Number
NA
IRB Name
Yale University
IRB Approval Date
2019-07-15
IRB Approval Number
2000025938
IRB Name
Harvard University
IRB Approval Date
2018-08-17
IRB Approval Number
IRB17-0987
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Pre-Analysis Plan for Calling for Health: Can Mobile Phones Improve Access to Public Health and Nutrition Programs?

MD5: 6af5d3951a605c18d15da8983edf010c

SHA1: f0d38a0f599b5057a768c0023cf1cf5c17b4abf8

Uploaded At: May 16, 2020

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials