Educational intervention can rewire village social networks.

A 22-month public-health intervention in Honduran villages rewired social networks by increasing ties among treated individuals and decreasing ties between treated and untreated individuals, lasting for three years.

• Why it matters: Understanding how interventions influence social networks is crucial because networks shape behavior, information flow, and collective action, yet their evolution in response to interventions remains underexplored.
• What they did: Researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial with 8,331 people across 110 villages, varying the proportion of households receiving the intervention, and analyzed tie dynamics and network changes over time.
• The result: The intervention caused treated individuals to form more ties and dissolve some with untreated individuals, reshaping friendship and financial connections without altering the overall degree distribution, thus acting as a social institution.