Using 'Theories of Change' and responsive feedback to design a digital service business for patent and proprietary medicine vendors in Nigeria.

In a paper titled "Responsive feedback: Towards a new paradigm to enhance intervention effectiveness", Viswanath . argue that dominant models of intervention design do not account for the complexity and unpredictability of implementation challenges.  Particularly in the behavioural sciences, intervention designs need to consider many factors that will be uncertain, or unknown, at the beginning of a new project.

Use of Electronic Loggers to Measure Changes in the Rates of Hand Washing with Soap in Low-Income Urban Households in India.

We evaluated the utility of electronic loggers to measure the effects of a simple intervention designed to influence the rates of hand washing with soap within enclosed toilets and bathrooms in low-income urban households in Kerala, India. 58 households were given three items with embedded electronic loggers for a period of 2-5 days. Two logged soaps tracked hand and body washing in the bathroom.

An investigation of the effects of a hand washing intervention on health outcomes and school absence using a randomised trial in Indian urban communities.

Objectives: To evaluate how an intervention, which combined hand washing promotion aimed at 5-year-olds with provision of free soap, affected illnesses among the children and their families and children's school absenteeism.

Methods: We monitored illnesses, including diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections (ARIs), school absences and soap consumption for 41 weeks in 70 low-income communities in Mumbai, India (35 communities per arm).

Results: Outcomes from 847 intervention households (containing 847 5-year-olds and 4863 subjects in total) and 833 control households (containing 833 5-year-olds and 4812 subjects) were modelled using negative binomial regression.