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Varun Chati
Varun Chati is a Senior Research Associate at Good Business Lab, where he leads a project to test the effect of soft skills screening for supervisors on employee workplace satisfaction and firm productivity. He has previously worked at J-PAL South Asia on a project testing the economic consequences of depression. Varun has a Masters degree in Development from Azim Premji University, and a Bachelors degree in Physics from Loyola College, Chennai.
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कोविड-19 और मानसिक स्वास्थ्य: "इन्फोडेमिक" से लड़ाई, एक समय में एक फोन कॉल
भारत में कोविड-19 के बारे में जानकारी संप्रेषित करने की नीतियों में मुख्य रूप से टेक्स्ट संदेश और फोन कॉल की शुरुआत में रिकॉर्ड किए गए वॉयस मैसेज शामिल हैं। कर्नाटक में गारमेंट श्रमिकों के किये गए एक दूरस्थ सर्वेक्षण के आधार पर यह लेख दर्शाता है कि महामारी से संबंधित जानकारी देने के लिए फोन कॉल का उपयोग टेक्स्ट संदेश और वॉयस रिकॉर्डिंग के जरिये ज्ञान प्रदान करने जितना ही प्रभावी है- और साथ ही यह मानसिक स्वास्थ्य पर सकारात्मक प्रभाव भी डालता है।
Covid-19 and mental health: Fighting the “infodemic”, one phone call at a time
COVID-19 information communication strategies globally have been dominated by SMS and voice recording based campaigns. The most pervasive Indian government campaign was a pre-recorded message that played before phone calls. We conducted a randomised controlled trial in 2020 using phone surveys and found in-person phone calls are at least as effective as text messages and voice recordings at providing knowledge, in addition to having a positive impact on mental health. We find a reduction in anxiety and depression from in-person phone calls along with a small increase in knowledge levels, when compared with the aforementioned modes. We think this could have implications for large scale information delivery campaigns. Meta description: Strategies to communicate information regarding Covid-19 in India have predominantly included text messages and recorded voice messages at the start of phone calls. Based on a remote survey of garment workers in Karnataka, this article shows that using pho