Information subsidies from military and civilian public relations practitioners receive varying degrees of acceptance by media gatekeepers.
Design A cluster randomised trial of information, subsidies, and incentives for school principals to reduce anaemia among their students.
*Control arm (no intervention); information arm (school principals received information about anaemia); subsidy arm (principals received information and unconditional subsidies for reducing anaemia); incentive arm (principals received information, subsidies, and financial incentives for reducing anaemia).
and iii) How do policies and other interventions into private markets, such as information, subsidies, price controls, donation, regulatory mechanisms, promotion practices, etc., impact on access to and appropriate use of medicines?
17 18 We therefore conducted a cluster randomised field experiment in rural Chinese primary schools (a natural contact point with children 19) to study the impact of information, subsidies, and financial incentives for school principals to reduce anaemia among their students.
Moreover, although the provision of information about anaemia to school principals was ineffective on average, when combined with principal incentives for good academic performance, information was associated with significant health gains on a par with the full bundle of information, subsidies, and anaemia reduction incentives.
9 10 11 "Information subsidies" such as university press releases have long been used to deliver salient aspects of selected research, 12 13 and as journalists are increasingly expected to produce more copy in less time 14155 these press releases have become the dominant link between academia and the media.
Subsidy arm (information + subsidy)—Principals were given the same information as in the information arm, but, because purchasing inputs to reduce anaemia might be difficult with current school operating budgets (which are small and allow for little discretion), schools in this arm also received earmarked operating budget subsidies.
Information on subsidy methods implemented by local governments was obtained from official reports [16 18].
Incentive arm (information + subsidy + incentives)—To test the effectiveness of direct rewards for health improvement, school principals in this group received performance payments for anaemia reductions among their student bodies (in addition to the information and subsidies described above).
Greater investment in agricultural extension to increase the availability of information and subsidies designed to relieve financial and credit constraints to adoption are two policy strategies that can be used to encourage widespread adoption and upscaling of MTM and associated practices.
