An educational program intended to improve maternal and child health fundamentally altered the social fabric of the rural Honduran villages where it was implemented, a new Yale-led study finds. The findings, researchers say, have implications for interventions anywhere that seek to improve people's wellbeing by disseminating information or changing behaviors through social contagion.
A prior study involving the same program in Honduras showed that exploiting social networks can enhance the effectiveness of public health and other interventions. This new study suggests that such initiatives also rewire existing social connections within the communities that receive them.
The study, based on a randomized controlled trial involving 8,331 people in 110 remote Honduran villages, found that the educational intervention not only changed who people engaged with health-related advice but also affected their friend and financial networks.
"We typically think of public health interventions as simply delivering health education with the potential of improving health knowledge and behaviors, but it turns out that they also act as social institutions that may fundamentally rewire human connections," said study co-first author Laura Forastiere, associate professor of biostatistics at the Yale School of Public Health. "Our study shows that when new information is provided, the whole structure of people's relationships, especially those based on sharing information, can be altered."
