Correcting Myopia Among Secondary School Children to Increase Academic High School Attendance Rates in Rural Communities
NCT ID: NCT04077086
Last Updated: 2024-12-27
Study Results
The study team has not published outcome measurements, participant flow, or safety data for this trial yet. Check back later for updates.
Basic Information
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RECRUITING
NA
10000 participants
INTERVENTIONAL
2024-11-28
2027-07-31
Brief Summary
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Study Plan: The investigators will choose 111 middle schools at random in Liaoning, northern China, and all children in Year 1 at each school will go at random into one of two groups: either a group getting free glasses, with support from teachers to push them to wear the glasses ("Intervention") or a group getting just glasses prescriptions ("Control.") The main study outcome will be the proportion of children going on to academic (as opposed to vocational) high school, and the study is powered to detect a 10% difference in this figure between groups.The study will also assess whether children wear their glasses at school and how often they use blackboards (which disadvantage short-sighted children) vs textbooks to learn from. These other outcomes will help us to better understand the causal pathway between vision and high school attendance. We will also study the total cost of providing glasses and the teacher support to wear them per additional student attending academic high school, as well as student mental health outcomes. We will also collect data on the progression of nearsightedness. The hypothesis of this study is that providing glasses will increase academic high school attendance.
Detailed Description
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Design: Cluster-randomised controlled trial
Rationale: Rural Chinese children have high myopia prevalence, but poor access to glasses. Our previous trials show giving free glasses significantly improves academic performance, with greater effect size than parental education or family income, equaling or exceeding other classroom-based medical interventions. Non-vocational (academic) high school attendance is only 30% in rural western China. Strong evidence of educational benefit from glasses is needed to spur adoption of national distribution programs.
Methods: Children in Year 1 at 111 randomly-selected middle schools in Liaoning, Northern China, will be randomized by school to receive free glasses and a trial-proven teacher-based incentive to promote wear (Intervention) or prescriptions only (Control). The main outcome 3 years later will be high school attendance (powered to detect 10% difference between study groups); secondary outcomes of compliance and use of near versus distance classroom learning aids will elucidate biological plausibility of a causal pathway between myopia correction and learning. Local knowledge and attitudes about myopia and spectacle use and intervention cost-effectiveness will be studied.
Statistical methods to be employed in the analysis and justification for the choice of sample size:
Adjusted- and unadjusted-comparison of the difference between study groups
Principal analyses for the main trial will include:
* Of attendance at academic high school after Year 3 of middle school (as opposed to following a vocational pathway or leaving school).
* of observed spectacle wear at un-announced examinations at school and for self-efficacy scores.
* of mental health outcomes after Year 1 year of intervention
Sample size: Assuming 120 students per school undergoing vision screening, 50% of children failing vision screening, 30% of these needing glasses, α=0.05, intra-class correlation=0.10, explained variation by covariates=0.40, difference between the groups in the main study outcome=10%, high-school attendance rate in the Control group=50%, a sample size of 111 middle-schools (55 or 56 in each group) will provide power=80%.
Loss to follow-up in our previous school-based trials in China, SWLW I and II, was approximately 4% over the course of one school year, and so our calculations here assume a loss to follow-up of 10% over 2-3 years. However, we have not adjusted for non-compliance because we will use a strict intention-to-treat analytic approach where children in schools allocated to the Intervention group will be analysed as such irrespective of compliance and because our intention is to test the policy of making free glasses available to those students who need them, rather than the effect of those students actually wearing the glasses. Further, our expected effect size is based conservatively on previous trials with compliance rates of approximately 40%, which we feel can be improved on in the current trial with teacher incentives as above.
Conditions
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Keywords
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Study Design
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RANDOMIZED
PARALLEL
TREATMENT
TRIPLE
Study Groups
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Intervention
Children at Intervention schools will receive free spectacles of a design they select, based on the child's measured refractive power and dispensed at school by the study optometrist. Additionally, teachers (but not children) in eligible classes will be informed that if 80% spectacle compliance as measured across three separate unannounced inspections was achieved, they will be given an incentive of an conditional cash transfer. The cash transfer will be deposited into the teacher's bank accounts directly.
Spectacles
Intervention group children in middle school Year 1 will receive spectacles in December 2024. Assuming that the relevant effects of treatment (glasses wear) on the main study outcome are complete once examinations determining high school attendance are finished at the end of Middle School Year 3, Intervention participants will have undergone 32 months (December 2024 - July 2027) of treatment by the endpoint of the trial.
Control
Children at Control schools will receive a glasses prescription and letter to the parents informing them of the refractive status of their child, with free glasses provided only at the end of the trial. No teacher incentive will be offered. Service offered to the Control group exceeds standard care, in that no school-based programs of vision screening and refraction currently exist in the study area, or in most of rural China.
No interventions assigned to this group
Interventions
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Spectacles
Intervention group children in middle school Year 1 will receive spectacles in December 2024. Assuming that the relevant effects of treatment (glasses wear) on the main study outcome are complete once examinations determining high school attendance are finished at the end of Middle School Year 3, Intervention participants will have undergone 32 months (December 2024 - July 2027) of treatment by the endpoint of the trial.
Other Intervention Names
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria
* Have uncorrected (without glasses) visual acuity of ≤6/12 in both eyes;
* Refractive error meets cut-offs shown to be associated with significantly greater improvement in visual acuity when corrected (myopia ≤-0.75 diopters (D, or astigmatism (non-spherical refractive error) ≥1.00 D);
* Visual acuity can be improved to \>= 6/7.5 in at least one eye with glasses.
Exclusion Criteria
18 Years
ALL
No
Sponsors
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Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center, Sun Yat-sen University
OTHER
Stanford University
OTHER
New England College of Optometry
OTHER
Clearly
OTHER
Ningxia Medical University
OTHER
He Eye Hospital
OTHER
He University
OTHER
Queen's University, Belfast
OTHER
Responsible Party
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Nathan Congdon
Professor
Principal Investigators
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Nathan Congdon, MD, MPH
Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
Queen's University, Belfast
Locations
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He Eye Specialist Hospital
Shenyang, Liaoning, China
Ningxia University
Yinchuan, Xixia, China
Centre for Public Health
Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
Countries
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Central Contacts
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Facility Contacts
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Li Meng
Role: primary
Huiping Zhang, PhD
Role: primary
Nathan Congdon, MD, MPH
Role: primary
Smit Gade
Role: backup
Other Identifiers
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MR/S023208/1
Identifier Type: -
Identifier Source: org_study_id