ArticleJournal of economic behavior & organization2021
Health knowledge and non-pharmaceutical interventions during the Covid-19 pandemic in Africa.
Article in Journal of economic behavior & organization, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Healthcare Appointments as Commitment Devices.Economic journal (London, England) · 2025Article
- COVID-19 and Contraceptive Use in Two African Countries: Examining Conflicting Pressures on Women.Population and development review · 2024Article
- Assessment of Factories on Adherence to COVID-19 Standard Operating Procedures: A Case Study of Wakiso, Mukono, Buikwe, and Jinja Districts, Uganda.Journal of tropical medicine · 2024Article
- Live tutoring calls did not improve learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sierra Leone.Journal of development economics · 2023Article
- Experiences of postnatal mothers with quality of care including water, sanitation and hygiene amenities during the outbreak of COVID - 19 in Ghana: An institutional cross-sectional study.Public health in practice (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
- The Perception of Environmental Information Disclosure on Rural Residents' Pro-Environmental Behavior.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Curtailing Covid-19 on a dollar-a-day in Malawi: Role of community leadership for shaping public health and economic responses to the pandemic.World development · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 7 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Providing health information is a non-pharmaceutical intervention designed to reduce disease transmission and infection risk by encouraging behavior change. But does knowledge change behavior? We test whether coronavirus health knowledge promotes protective risk mitigation behaviors early in the Covid-19 pandemic in samples from four African countries (Ghana, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania). Despite reputations for weak health sectors and low average levels of education, health knowledge of the symptoms and transmission mechanisms was high in all countries in the two months after the virus entered the country. Higher knowledge was associated with increased protective measures that would likely lower disease risk with one exception-knowledge was inversely correlated with social distancing. Respondents largely adhered to mask mandates and lockdowns, but continued coming into contact with others at small, informal gatherings, gatherings not affected by mandates. Knowledge alone did not reduce all risky activities, especially gatherings within other people's homes. Even early in the pandemic, income loss or stress were commonly reported. Our results suggest that early and consistent government provision of health information likely reduced the initial severity of the pandemic in Africa but was not a panacea.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.