Evaluation of Impacts of Health Education for Children of Microcredit Clients in Peru

January 11, 2010 updated by: Innovations for Poverty Action
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.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

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.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

2453

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Peru
      • Pucallpa, Peru
        • Innovations for Poverty Action

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

N/A

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

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

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Active Comparator: Microcredit only
Other: Microcredit
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.
Experimental: Microcredit plus health education
Thirty minutes of a health education module administered to clients by loan officer at their monthly group meetings over the course of 8 months.
Other: Microcredit
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.
Behavioral: Health education
30 minutes of a health education module delivered to clients by loan officers during monthly repayment meetings, over the course of 8 months.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
Anthropometric measures including height, weight, and blood hemoglobin level
Time Frame: One year after intervention begins
One year after intervention begins
Client health knowledge on a variety of issues related to child health (e.g. diarrhea, fever)
Time Frame: One year after intervention begins
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.)
Time Frame: One year after intervention begins
One year after intervention begins

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
Social support as measured by the Duke-UNC FSSQ
Time Frame: One year after intervention begins
One year after intervention begins

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Innovations for Poverty Action

Collaborators

University of California, Berkeley
University of California, San Francisco
American Medical Women's Association
Center for Latin American Studies at UCB
Interdisciplinary MPH Program at the UCB School of Public Health
Rainer Fund

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Lia Fernald, PhD MBA, University of California, Berkeley
  • Principal Investigator: Dean Karlan, PhD MBA MPP, Yale University

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

January 1, 2007

Primary Completion (Actual)

February 1, 2008

Study Completion (Actual)

February 1, 2008

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

January 8, 2010

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 11, 2010

First Posted (Estimate)

January 12, 2010

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimate)

January 12, 2010

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 11, 2010

Last Verified

January 1, 2010

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • IPA-2007-PE

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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