End COVID-19 in low- and middle-income countries - Mobile phone messaging to promote preventive behaviors

Abhijit Banerjee, Marcella Alsan, Emily Breza, Arun G. Chandrasekhar, Esther Duflo, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Benjamin A. Olken

Science, 2022 375:6585, 1105–1110.

Populations vulnerable to COVID-19 due to conditions of poverty and marginalization often have less access to timely, accurate, and credible information. For the first time in history, most poor people had direct or indirect access to a mobile phone during a global pandemic. This was both an opportunity and a danger: Mobile phones could be used to transmit useful public health messages to the most remote corners of the world. At the same time, individuals were potentially overwhelmed by messaging. In a survey we conducted in West Bengal, India, in May 2020, the average person had received about 20 messages on COVID-19 in the previous 2 days.

In this context, is it possible to use mobile phone messaging to convey information and promote prevention? How best to do it? Using a series of mobile phone messaging interventions across developed and developing countries, we have found that trusted messengers can induce preventive behavior change during a pandemic and are effective even in an information-rich environment or polarized climate.