Effectiveness of a novel mobile health education intervention (Peek) on spectacle wear among children in India: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

摘要

BackgroundUncorrected refractive errors are the commonest cause of visual loss in children despite spectacle correction being highly cost-effective. Many affected children do not benefit from correction as a high proportion do not wear their spectacles. Reasons for non-wear include parental attitudes, overprescribing and children being teased/bullied. Most school programmes do not provide health education for affected children, their peers, teachers or parents.The Portable Eye Examination Kit (Peek) will be used in this study. Peek has applications for measuring visual acuity with software for data entry and sending automated messages to inform providers and parents. Peek also has an application which simulates the visual blur of uncorrected refractive error (SightSim).The hypothesis is that higher proportion of children with uncorrected refractive errors in schools allocated to the Peek educational package will wear their spectacles 3–4 months after they are dispensed, and a higher proportion of children identified with other eye conditions will access services, compared with schools receiving standard school screening.