Clinical trial NCT02396407: Spillover Effects of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Interventions on Child Health
Official title: Spillover Effects of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Interventions on Child Health
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Helminthiasis
Diarrhea
Respiratory Infection
Keywords: Chlorine water treatment
Point-of-use water treatment
Household water treatment with safe storage
Handwashing with soap
Hand hygiene
Latrines
Child potties
Intestinal parasitic infection
Soil-transmitted helminths
Water
Sanitation
Handwashing
Diarrhea
Herd immunity
Helminths
Lead sponsor: University of California, Berkeley
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh
name: Stanford University
name: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
name: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
First posted: 2015-03-24
Enrollment: 1789
Sex: ALL
Maximum age (years): 60
Standard ages: CHILD
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: PREVENTION

Brief summary: The purpose of this study is to measure whether a combined water, sanitation, and hygiene intervention leads to improved health of children who did not receive the intervention themselves and who live within a close vicinity of intervention recipients.

Detailed description: Almost 90% of diarrhea cases and 15% of under-5 diarrhea deaths worldwide could be prevented through improved water, sanitation, and hygiene. Sanitation interventions are also important for the prevention of soil-transmitted helminths, which infect 21 million children under five each year. Infection with soil-transmitted helminths and repeated episodes of diarrhea early in life can compromise physical and cognitive growth and development, resulting in poorer school performance later in life. Thus, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions are important not only for reducing child mortality, but also for preventing cycles of poverty and poor health.

It is possible that WASH interventions affect not only those who receive them but also those who are geographically proximate or connected socially to those receiving the intervention. Indeed, there is a large infectious disease modeling literature based on this premise. Investigators define intervention effects on non-recipients "spillovers", and they are often referred to as "herd effects" or "indirect effects". Most studies that have empirically measured spillovers of child health interventions with an experimental design have focused on vaccines and deworming, and no studies have measured spillovers from WASH interventions. The development and application of methodology for measuring spillovers of community interventions empirically would make a valuable contribution to fields including epidemiology, economics, political science, and social welfare, all of which are concerned with measuring the impact of programs and interventions which may spill over. The presence and magnitude of positive spillovers are important; if spillovers are present and are in the same direction as treatment effects but are not accounted for when estimating treatment effects, estimates will be biased towards the null. As a result, both the efficacy and cost effectiveness of the intervention will be underestimated.

In this study, investigators will measure spillovers of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions in an existing, large, rigorously designed trial: the WASH Benefits trial (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01590095). Funded by the Bill \& Melinda Gates Foundation, this trial aims to measure the individual and combined effects of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions on child health and development. It is a cluster-randomized, controlled trial with six treatment arms and a double-sized control arm carried out in rural Bangladesh. This add-on study is funded by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (1R21HD076216-01A1). Investigators hypothesize that children who live in close proximity to compounds that receive a combined sanitation, handwashing, and water treatment intervention--compared to children who live in close proximity to control compounds (no intervention)--will have: 1) lower prevalence of diarrhea, 2) lower prevalence and intensity of infection of soil transmitted helminths, and 3) lower prevalence of respiratory illness.

Investigators will collect additional data from the existing combined intervention (sanitation+handwashing+water) and control arms of the WASH Benefits trial. For each WASH Benefits household, investigators will locate the nearest household with children 0-59 months of age that are not enrolled in WASH Benefits and collect data in that household. Our primary outcomes are soil transmitted helminth infection among children 0-59 months, caregiver-reported 7-day diarrhea, and respiratory illness among children 0-59 months (the same age as the WASH Benefits cohort). Our findings will document either the presence or absence of spillovers of the combined sanitation+handwashing+water intervention.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Children not enrolled in WASH Benefits who live in a compound within 120 steps (2 minutes walking time) of a compound enrolled in WASH Benefits (combined WSH or control arms) and are 0-60 months 24 months after intervention

Exclusion Criteria:

* Children enrolled in WASH Benefits
* Children who live in compounds (baris) that share a courtyard with a compound enrolled in the WASH Benefits study
* Children who live in compounds (baris) that share a latrine or handwashing station with a compound enrolled in the WASH Benefits study

Primary outcomes:
measure: Prevalence of soil-transmitted helminths (Ascaris, hookworm, Trichuris)
timeFrame: Measured approximately 24 months after intervention
measure: Intensity of soil-transmitted helminth infections (Ascaris, hookworm, Trichuris)
timeFrame: Measured approximately 24 months after intervention
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Diarrhea prevalence
timeFrame: Measured approximately 24 months after intervention
measure: Respiratory illness prevalence
timeFrame: Measured approximately 24 months after intervention
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Dhaka
country: Bangladesh
facility: International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh
Study officials:
affiliation: University of California, Berkeley
name: John M Colford, Jr., MD PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Arnold BF, Null C, Luby SP, Unicomb L, Stewart CP, Dewey KG, Ahmed T, Ashraf S, Christensen G, Clasen T, Dentz HN, Fernald LC, Haque R, Hubbard AE, Kariger P, Leontsini E, Lin A, Njenga SM, Pickering AJ, Ram PK, Tofail F, Winch PJ, Colford JM Jr. Cluster-randomised controlled trials of individual and combined water, sanitation, hygiene and nutritional interventions in rural Bangladesh and Kenya: the WASH Benefits study design and rationale. BMJ Open. 2013 Aug 30;3(8):e003476. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2013-003476.
citation: Lin A, Arnold BF, Afreen S, Goto R, Huda TMN, Haque R, Raqib R, Unicomb L, Ahmed T, Colford JM, Luby SP. Household environmental conditions are associated with enteropathy and impaired growth in rural Bangladesh. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2013 Jul;89(1):130-137. doi: 10.4269/ajtmh.12-0629. Epub 2013 Apr 29.
citation: Sultana R, Mondal UK, Rimi NA, Unicomb L, Winch PJ, Nahar N, Luby SP. An improved tool for household faeces management in rural Bangladeshi communities. Trop Med Int Health. 2013 Jul;18(7):854-60. doi: 10.1111/tmi.12103. Epub 2013 Apr 5.
citation: Hulland KR, Leontsini E, Dreibelbis R, Unicomb L, Afroz A, Dutta NC, Nizame FA, Luby SP, Ram PK, Winch PJ. Designing a handwashing station for infrastructure-restricted communities in Bangladesh using the integrated behavioural model for water, sanitation and hygiene interventions (IBM-WASH). BMC Public Health. 2013 Sep 23;13:877. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-13-877.
citation: Dreibelbis R, Winch PJ, Leontsini E, Hulland KR, Ram PK, Unicomb L, Luby SP. The Integrated Behavioural Model for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene: a systematic review of behavioural models and a framework for designing and evaluating behaviour change interventions in infrastructure-restricted settings. BMC Public Health. 2013 Oct 26;13:1015. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-13-1015.
citation: Vujcic J, Ram PK, Hussain F, Unicomb L, Gope PS, Abedin J, Mahmud ZH, Islam MS, Luby SP. Toys and toilets: cross-sectional study using children's toys to evaluate environmental faecal contamination in rural Bangladeshi households with different sanitation facilities and practices. Trop Med Int Health. 2014 May;19(5):528-36. doi: 10.1111/tmi.12292. Epub 2014 Mar 19.
citation: Ercumen A, Naser AM, Unicomb L, Arnold BF, Colford JM Jr, Luby SP. Effects of source- versus household contamination of tubewell water on child diarrhea in rural Bangladesh: a randomized controlled trial. PLoS One. 2015 Mar 27;10(3):e0121907. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0121907. eCollection 2015.