Social Network Interventions in Rural Honduras

This project will examine the spread of health interventions with a randomized control trial design by introducing public health interventions in 32 villages in the Honduran Department of Lempira. Based on identified public health needs in the region, namely improved drinking water and diet, this study will provide training on the use of chlorine (sodium hypochlorite) for water purification and multivitamins for nutritional supplementation. In some villages, individuals selected for their social connectedness will be trained and given coupons that can be redeemed for either chlorine bleach or multivitamins, and these persons will be asked to spread this information and distribute coupons to four people of their choosing. In other villages, individuals selected at random will receive the same training, materials, and instructions. A second wave of coupon distribution will provide coupons to those who received a coupon from the original "seed" groups so that they may disperse these coupons further out in the social networks. Over the following months, study investigators will look at how knowledge of these health practices, and uptake or and adherence to the practices, spreads throughout the villages.

More specifically, the investigators will examine the speed and extent of spreading of these new health practices after introducing them to three different initial "seed" groups: (1) people chosen on the basis of being named as a friend by many people in their village, (2) people chosen based on being named as a friend by a randomly chosen individual, and (3) a group of randomly chosen individuals. It is hypothesized that spread will occur faster and/or to a greater extent when the intervention is started in groups 1 and 2 versus group 3 (control group).