Child Health Status
Conditions
Keywords
Poverty, Global health, International health, Latin America, Peru, Child health, Microcredit, Microenterprise, Microfinance
Brief summary
This purpose of this study is to determine whether a health education intervention for clients of a microcredit organization in Peru will improve health outcomes among clients and their children.
Detailed description
An increasingly popular scheme for poverty alleviation is microcredit, the awarding of small loans to individuals too poor or too remote to take advantage of traditional lending services. Studies have repeatedly shown that income is one of the factors strongly associated with physical and mental wellbeing. Yet economic growth alone doesn't necessarily lead to healthier families, especially if basic health knowledge or health services are absent in the community. Microcredit institutions have recently tried to address this issue by supplementing banking-only microcredit programs with programs that include tie-ins or add-ons such as health education or health services. A rigorous evaluation of such banking-plus endeavors has not yet been conducted, leaving a gap in the knowledge base regarding whether these organizations are meeting their stated goals in catering to both economic and social needs. This study attempts to address this research question using a randomized controlled trial of a health education intervention to clients of a microcredit organization in Peru.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALHealth education
30 minutes of a health education module delivered to clients by loan officers during monthly repayment meetings, over the course of 8 months.
OTHERMicrocredit
Small loans administered to clients through the collaborating microcredit organization, to be repaid monthly over the course of six months in the context of monthly loan group meetings.
Sponsors
American Medical Women's Association
University of California, Berkeley
Center for Latin American Studies at UCB
University of California, San Francisco
Interdisciplinary MPH Program at the UCB School of Public Health
Rainer Fund
Innovations for Poverty Action
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Masking
NONE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Inclusion criteria
* Subjects must be current clients of the collaborating microcredit organization * Clients must be at least 18 years of age * Children of clients must be less than 5 years of age * Study participants must be able to speak and understand Spanish
Exclusion criteria
* Only one client from any particular household may participate
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| Anthropometric measures including height, weight, and blood hemoglobin level | One year after intervention begins |
| Client health knowledge on a variety of issues related to child health (e.g. diarrhea, fever) | One year after intervention begins |
| Child health status as measured by a variety of indicators (e.g. days of diarrhea, presence of bloody diarrhea, presence of severe cough, days of fever, etc.) | One year after intervention begins |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| Social support as measured by the Duke-UNC FSSQ | One year after intervention begins |
Countries
Peru
Outcome results
None listed