Impact of Teacher Incentive Intervention on Students’ Vision Healthcare Uptake: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial

Less than one-third of rural Chinese children with refractive error own or wear eyeglasses. To study the effect of teacher incentives on the acceptance of vision care offered to rural students with uncorrected refractive error, we conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial in 18 townships in one county in Shaanxi Province. Primary and junior high schools within each township were assigned to either intervention (all teachers received an incentive) or control (no teacher incentives were offered) groups. A total of 42 schools were assigned to either the intervention group (13 schools) or the control group (29 schools). Teachers in the intervention group could elect to receive high-value (sunglasses worth USD 148), moderate-value (eyeglasses worth USD 89), or cash incentives (USD 35) if ≥70% of eligible students (uncorrected visual acuity (VA) ≤ 6/12 in both eyes and corrected VA ≤ 6/9.5 in both eyes) in the teacher’s class visited a program-affiliated vision center (VC) within 60 days after their vision screening. Among 8238 students, 3401 (41.2%, of which 53.0% were girls with a mean age of 12 (SD 1.75)) met the enrollment criteria and were randomly allocated to the intervention (n = 1645, 49.0%) and control groups (n = 1579, 51.0%). Among these, 3224 (94.8%) completed the study and underwent analysis. Nearly equal numbers of students had classroom teachers selecting the high-value (n = 524, 31.9%), moderate-value (n = 582, 35.4%), and cash incentives (n = 539, 32.8%). The rate of the acceptance of offered vision care was significantly higher in the intervention group (382/1645 = 23.2%) compared to the control group (172/1579 = 10.9%, 95% confidence interval for observed difference 12.3%, p < 0.001). Teacher incentives appeared effective in improving Chinese rural school-aged children’s uptake rate of vision services provided by county hospital-based VCs.