Does bundling reminders with messages debunking misconceptions improve the demand for preventive health services? A randomized controlled trial among adults with hypertension in Punjab, India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4595124 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Caterina Favaretti (0000-0001-7448-3736, Technical University of Munich), Vasanthi Subramonia Pillai (0000-0002-5648-3430, Technical University of Munich), Molly Mcconnell (0000-0002-3437-3249, Harvard Global Health Institute), M Korban Ali (0000-0001-7266-2503, Emory University), Seema Murthy (0000-0002-7755-2407), Adithi Chandrasekar (National Innovation Foundation), Shirley D Yan (0000-0001-7233-8674), Nikkil Sudharsanan (0000-0003-1710-4634, Heidelberg University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 373 |
| Pages | 117819 |
| Publication date | 2025-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Science & Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0277-9536 • E-ISSN: 1873-5347 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117819 |
| PMID | 40174523 |
| OpenAlex | W4407229818 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 42 |
Regular follow-up visits are a crucial component of prevention and care for several important non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Yet evidence across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) reveals low demand for preventive healthcare visits. While reminders are commonly used to improve follow-up visit attendance, we hypothesized that low demand could also be driven by misconceptions about the need for preventive care. We thus conducted a randomized evaluation of an enhanced reminder intervention that combined a traditional reminder with debunking information aimed at correcting misconceptions around preventive healthcare. We focused specifically on correcting misconceptions about and improving follow-up visit attendance for hypertension among a sample of 463 individuals with uncontrolled blood pressure recruited from two public hospitals in Punjab, India. Our enhanced reminder was highly effective and improved follow-up visit attendance by 12.1 percentage points. Importantly, we found widespread misconceptions about when hypertension care and treatment are needed among participants at baseline. However, our enhanced reminder did not significantly correct these misconceptions, suggesting that the reminder's effect was primarily mediated through its effect on salience rather than belief correction. While our reminder improved preventive care seeking, the results reveal the challenge of changing deeply rooted misconceptions and suggest that there is still significant scope for further improving demand by combining reminders with more effective belief correction strategies
Alternative medicine · Environmental health · Family medicine · Health services · Multimedia · On demand · Population · Randomized controlled trial · Computer Science · Global Maternal and Child Health · ICT in Developing Communities · Medicine · Mobile Health and mHealth Applications · Gerontology · Surgery
Debunking
Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 84 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017
High Blood Pressure and Cardiovascular Disease
The influence of education on health
Model-Based Recursive Partitioning
Health Behavior in Developing Countries
The Constructive, Destructive, and Reconstructive Power of Social Norms
Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019
Understanding barriers and facilitators to clinic attendance and medication adherence among adults with hypertensive urgency in Tanzania
Are people at high risk for diabetes visiting health facility for confirmation of diagnosis? A population-based study from rural India
Self-Control and Demand for Preventive Health
Effectiveness of WhatsApp based debunking reminders on follow-up visit attendance for individuals with hypertension
The effectiveness of short-format refutational fact-checks
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |