Evidence on designing sanitation interventions.

Sanitation is a public good, the responsibility for which is shared between households and the government. Interventions in the sector, therefore, must be designed with an eye toward reducing crowd out. We discuss the new findings on sanitation provision from the 12 papers in this special issue in the context of a simple model of household choice of levels of sanitation investment in the face of joint responsibility between the government and households over sanitation.

Religious proximity and misinformation: Experimental evidence from a mobile phone-based campaign in India.

We investigate how religion concordance influences the effectiveness of preventive health campaigns. Conducted during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in two major Indian cities marked by Hindu-Muslim tensions, we randomly assigned a representative sample of slum residents to receive either a physician-delivered information campaign promoting health-related preventive practices, or uninformative control messages on their mobile phones. Messages, introduced by a local citizen (the sender), were cross-randomized to start with a greeting signaling either a Hindu or a Muslim identity, manipulating religion concordance between sender and receiver.

Sanitation and marriage markets in India: Evidence from the Total Sanitation Campaign.

This paper measures the additional value of sanitation within the marriage arrangement. We use data from the Indian human development household survey (IHDS) to model the marital decisions of men and women in rural India and to estimate the marital surplus (the gains from being married). We use the model to demonstrate that the government's Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) increased marital surplus and changed marriage market outcomes for men and women.

Community matters: Heterogeneous impacts of a sanitation intervention.

Sanitation is at the heart of public health policies in most of the developing world, where around 85% of the population still lack access to safe sanitation. We study the effectiveness of a widely adopted participatory community-level information intervention aimed at improving sanitation. Results from a randomized controlled trial, implemented at scale in rural Nigeria, reveal stark heterogeneity in impacts: the intervention has immediate, strong and lasting effects on sanitation practices in less wealthy communities, realized through increased sanitation investments.

Lively Minds: improving health and development through play-a randomised controlled trial evaluation of a comprehensive ECCE programme at scale in Ghana.

Introduction: Many children in developing countries grow up in environments that lack stimulation, leading to deficiencies in early years of development. Several efficacy trials of early childhood care and education (ECCE) programmes have demonstrated potential to improve child development; evidence on whether these effects can be sustained once programmes are scaled is much more mixed. This study evaluates whether an ECCE programme shown to be effective in an efficacy trial maintains effectiveness when taken to scale by the Government of Ghana (GoG).

COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy in low- and middle-income countries.

Widespread acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines is crucial for achieving sufficient immunization coverage to end the global pandemic, yet few studies have investigated COVID-19 vaccination attitudes in lower-income countries, where large-scale vaccination is just beginning. We analyze COVID-19 vaccine acceptance across 15 survey samples covering 10 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia, Africa and South America, Russia (an upper-middle-income country) and the United States, including a total of 44,260 individuals. We find considerably higher willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine in our LMIC samples (mean 80.

Group Sessions or Home Visits for Early Childhood Development in India: A Cluster RCT.

Objectives: Poor early childhood development in low- and middle-income countries is a major public health problem. Efficacy trials have shown the potential of early childhood development interventions but scaling up is costly and challenging. Guidance on effective interventions' delivery is needed.

Effects of a scalable home-visiting intervention on child development in slums of urban India: evidence from a randomised controlled trial.

Background: An estimated 63.4 million Indian children under 5 years are at risk of poor development. Home visits that use a structured curriculum to help caregivers enhance the quality of the home stimulation environment improve developmental outcomes.