CGPH FACULTY: Lia Fernald
DATE OF PUBLICATION: January 2011
REGION: Latin America
REFERENCE: Hamad R, Fernald LCh, Karlan DS. Health education for microcredit clients in Peru: a randomized controlled trial. BMC Public Health. 2011 Jan 24;11(1):51. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-11-51.”
SUMMARY/ABSTRACT: Poverty, lack of female empowerment, and lack of education are major risk factors for childhood illness worldwide. Microcredit programs, by offering small loans to poor individuals, attempt to address the first two of these risk factors, poverty and gender disparity. This study investigates the health effects of also addressing the remaining risk factor, lack of knowledge about important health issues, through randomization of members of a microcredit organization to receive a health education module based on the World Health Organization’s Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) community intervention. These results imply that the intervention did not have sufficient intensity to change behavior, or that microcredit organizations may not be an appropriate setting for the administration of child health educational interventions of this type.
ACCESS: Link to Pubmed