Despite decades of investment in community-led sanitation programmes that focused on demand generation and strengthening the supply chain of the sanitation marketplace – there was limited evidence if the approach worked effectively.
As part of World Bank commissioned a three-country impact evaluation study, NEERMAN collaborated with UC Berkeley to conduct the RCT of a sanitation programme. The results of the first of its kind, large-scale, RCT involving about 5,200 children below five years of age from 3039 households amply demonstrated the need for government to revisit its existing strategy of increasing the number of households that have toilets to reduce open defecation and thereby improve the health outcomes in young children. The study took place between May 2009 and April 2011 in 80 rural villages from two districts of Madhya Pradesh. The study greatly influenced sanitation programmes and funding at the global scale questioning mane tightly held but unproven assumptions.
The findings from the study are published in a reputed journal PLOS Medicine.