Generating awareness for health hazards of climate change in Rural Western Uttar Pradesh, India: Application of difference-in-differences method

Climate change is a major issue which needs to be identified in terms of health hazards; sudden change in temperature, rainfall patterns, deteriorating water quality and reducing agricultural production, etc. This has resulted into the adverse effect on human health. Incidences of waterborne (WBD), airborne diseases (ABD) and vector-borne diseases (VBD) have been elevated by 20 per cent since last decade in India. The study was conducted to precisely estimate the effect of trainings imparted to 100 rural women with respect to different parameters of climate change, WBD, ABD, VBD, sanitation and hygiene and diet modification in different weathers. The methodology used in finding out the output was “difference in differences” method. For the purpose 100 women farmers were also sampled as control group. The pre training mean score of treatment (PrTMS-T) group on their awareness about different parameters of climate change was 1.18 which increased to 2.04 in post- training survey (PoTMS-T) and it was found to be most effective with mean score of main effect of training (MSMET) 0.74 over control. It was concluded from the study that well defined training programmes shall definitely bring a major transformation in awareness level of rural women. Moreover, the methodology used also got validated in the study which opened a new option for the extension researchers to precisely estimate the effect of any planned intervention.