Health insurance awareness and its uptake in India: a systematic review protocol

Abstract

Introduction: Health insurance is one of the important approaches that can help in boosting universal healthcare coverage through improved healthcare utilisation and financial protection. This objectives of this review are to identify various interventions implemented in India to promote awareness of health insurance, and to provide evidence for the effectiveness of such interventions on the awareness and uptake of health insurance by the resident Indian population.

Methods and analysis: A systematic review will be carried out based on the Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions. The review will include experimental and analytical observational studies that have included adult population (>18 years) in India. We will include any intervention, policy or programme that directly or indirectly affects awareness or uptake of health insurance. The following outcomes will be eligible to be included: awareness or health insurance literacy, attitude such as readiness to buy health insurance or decision making, uptake of health insurance, demand-side and supply-side factors for awareness of health insurance, and awareness as a factor for uptake and re-enrolment in health insurance. Databases such as MEDLINE (PubMed), Web of Science, Scopus, 3ie impact evaluation repository and Social Science Research Network will be searched from January 2010 to 15 July 2020. Additionally, important government websites and references of the included studies will be scanned to identify potential records. Three authors, independently, will carry out screening and data extraction. Studies will be categorised into quantitative and qualitative, and mixed-methods synthesis will be employed to analyse the findings.

Ethics and dissemination: This review will be based on published studies and will not recruit human participants directly, therefore, ethical clearance is not applicable. We will disseminate the final review findings in a national or international conference and publish in a peer-reviewed journal.

Keywords: health economics; health policy; public health.