Background: Women in India continue to have high rates of anemia, especially in critical periods of adolescence and pregnancy. Anemia persists despite decades of government programs aimed at combatting anemia, including through the provision of iron folic acid tablets (IFA). With growing access to mobile phones and social media, even among women, mobile interventions hold potential for influencing knowledge and behaviors. Social media consumption, including on Facebook, is high in India. However, little research has explored if women can be reached with health messages using social media, if data can be collected through this mechanism, and if interventions using social media impact knowledge and behaviors surrounding important health issues such as anemia. The aims of this study were to test an advertising campaign on Facebook about anemia and IFA to women, collect data through social media, and measure its impact.Methods: A baseline survey and two follow-up surveys were sent to women via Facebook in 2019 in two states of India: Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Between each round of data collection, a set of advertisements based on gaps in knowledge and practices identified in the baseline on anemia and IFA were delivered to more than 3 million women on Facebook. Using this data, we analyze current knowledge and behaviors around anemia and IFA and look at differences by socio-demographics including age, Marital status, and pregnancy. Using logistic regression models, we then look for evidence of a significant change in knowledge and behaviors between rounds of data collection.Results: We find that while general knowledge about anemia was high, especially related to its importance in pregnancy, misperceptions persist, such as that it makes babies large and delivery difficult. Only about 15% of the population was currently taking IFA, although nearly 50% noted that they had at some point. Younger women had lower levels of knowledge and practices. Findings about the impact of the Ad campaigns were mixed, with some indicators changing in positive and some in negative directions and no clear trend between surveys. Two indicators that were of high focus in the Ad campaigns changed in the desired direction after both ad campaigns (iron can make labor/delivery difficult and iron supplements are only for women who have anemia).Conclusions: Overall, this study shows that a social media campaign about anemia has the potential to reach a large number of women in India, including young women, who are hard to reach if they are not in school or currently pregnant and seeing a physician. This study shows that it is possible to collect data from women through social media and measure the impact of an intervention. More research is needed to know if social media is an effective approach to actually change attitudes and behaviors related to anemia, or other important health concerns.

Impact of Microfinance 4.1 Impact of Microfinance on Clients (Demand Side) 4.2. Impact on MFIs (Sustainability of Microfinance Sector) 4.3 Role of Subsidy Microfinance Regulatory Regimes 5.1 Type of Laws within which MFIs are registered. 5.2 Challenges NGO's and NGO MFI's face due to inadequate Regulations Competition in Microcredit Market and the Issues of Overlapping 6.1 Nature and impact of competition in the micro credit market 6.2 Impact of overlapping membership in the micro credit sector

As the media landscape changes and billions of people around the world turn to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other social media platforms for information and social interactions, the need to develop effective methods of leveraging social media for social behavior change communication (SBCC) becomes increasingly important. Yet, in order for the public health sector to embrace social media for SBCC, we must have methods for measuring the impact of social media-based SBCC. In this letter, we share a new approach for measurement and evaluation of social media-based SBCC campaigns. The approach was developed as part of an iron-folic acid health intervention targeting young women in two states in northern India; Uttar Pradesh and Maydar Pradesh.

As the media landscape changes and billions of people around the world turn to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other social media platforms for information and social interactions, the need to develop effective methods of leveraging social media for social behavior change communication (SBCC) becomes increasingly important. Yet, in order for the public health sector to embrace social media for SBCC, we must have methods for measuring the impact of social media-based SBCC. In this letter, we share a new approach for measurement and evaluation of social media-based SBCC campaigns. The approach was developed as part of an iron-folic acid health intervention targeting young women in two states in northern India; Uttar Pradesh and Maydar Pradesh.

This research studies the impact of microfinance services on the entrepreneurial success of users of such services who are mostly women of the lowest income categories. Three microfinance financial services namely, microcredit, micro-savings and micro-insurance have been identified through literature among other non -financial services. In this study, researcher has studied only the influence of financial services of microfinance on entrepreneurial success of women entrepreneurs. An empirical investigation is carried out among a sample of 464 women receiving microfinance services, selected using stratified random sampling technique. The data were collected using a structured questionnaire through face to face interviews. The statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) (version 21) is employed to test the relationships between these microfinance services and entrepreneurial success. The sample of this study captures only the women entrepreneurs from Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NBFIs) registered with the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. The results have discovered that microcredit and micro-savings have a positive relationship with entrepreneurial success of women, while microinsurance has not shown such a relationship. These findings can be helpful to the policy makers in developing the microfinance sector and microfinance institutions to design their service offers. The research identifies some important areas for future research as well.