COVID-19 Health and wellbeing Trial in Bangladesh

The intervention, starting on 16 July 2020, consists of four brief mental-health counseling sessions over the phone (i.e., tele-counseling) to 2,402 women distributed across 357 villages in Khulna and Satkhira districts in Bangladesh. One adult woman per household was enrolled for the program. Following enrolment, we randomly assigned them to either the telecounseling treatment arm, Arm 1, or to the control arm, Arm 2, where no counseling is provided to women. Therefore, our randomization is at the household (or individual) level. Eventually, 1,299 women were assigned to Arm 1 and 1,103 women to Arm 2. We are running four fortnightly (every two weeks) tele-counseling sessions, each for 20 minutes, covering different aspects of the coronavirus’ impact on women’s physical and emotional wellbeing. Thus, the intervention will be given over two months. The four informational modules (delivered via interactive sessions using study-specific materials) that are being covered are on: (i) awareness of COVID-19, symptoms and preventive measures to address the fear of infection; (ii) taking care of emotional wellbeing to cope with stress; (iii) taking care of physical health of self and child to address health-related anxiety; and, (iv) helping each other and staying connected to cope with social distancing. Sessions are delivered by locally recruited, trained female para counsellors. Para counsellors contact participants a week before every session to make an appointment that is convenient for participants; they then talk to participants during the nominated time.