Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: daily, we hear and make claims about the effects of treatments. A 'treatment' is anything you do to maintain or improve your health (for example, taking a medicine, getting an operation, eating or drinking something, exercising, or using medicinal herbs) or the health of communities. Many claims about the effects of treatments are wrong, inaccurate or unreliable.
The aim of the Informed Health Choices (IHC) project is to help people think critically about health claims and to make informed health choices. With this purpose, the IHC team has developed effective learning resources for teaching primary school children in Uganda.
Objectives: to explore children’s and teachers’ experiences using the Spanish IHC primary school resources in schools from Barcelona (Spain).
Methods: we will conduct a pilot study to evaluate the Spanish IHC primary school resources in our context (Figure 1). The school intervention will include: 1) training of teachers; 2) teaching lessons to school children (nine lessons, one lesson per week); 3) an assessment of the children’s abilities to assess claims and make informed choices using multiple-choice questions; 4) non-participatory lesson observations; and 5) user-testing interviews.
We will include three schools from Barcelona, which have participated in other health promotion programmes, including one private and two public schools. We will include approximately 180 children (10 to 11 years old), and six teachers.
We will use a previously validated questionnaire to assess the children’s abilities after the lessons. We will use structured data-collection forms and interview guides to record data from non-participatory lesson observations and user-testing interviews.
Results: this is a protocol for the pilot study; we will present the preliminary results at the Cochrane Colloquium in Santiago.
Conclusions: assessing how the IHC primary school resources work in our context and, if necessary, adapting them to our context will allow us to implement new, relevant and innovative learning resources to enable children to assess claims about treatment effects and make informed health choices.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: the IHC project involves children and teachers, who have been engaged in designing and evaluating the IHC primary school resources. They will be further involved in the contextualisation of the IHC resources.
The aim of the Informed Health Choices (IHC) project is to help people think critically about health claims and to make informed health choices. With this purpose, the IHC team has developed effective learning resources for teaching primary school children in Uganda.
Objectives: to explore children’s and teachers’ experiences using the Spanish IHC primary school resources in schools from Barcelona (Spain).
Methods: we will conduct a pilot study to evaluate the Spanish IHC primary school resources in our context (Figure 1). The school intervention will include: 1) training of teachers; 2) teaching lessons to school children (nine lessons, one lesson per week); 3) an assessment of the children’s abilities to assess claims and make informed choices using multiple-choice questions; 4) non-participatory lesson observations; and 5) user-testing interviews.
We will include three schools from Barcelona, which have participated in other health promotion programmes, including one private and two public schools. We will include approximately 180 children (10 to 11 years old), and six teachers.
We will use a previously validated questionnaire to assess the children’s abilities after the lessons. We will use structured data-collection forms and interview guides to record data from non-participatory lesson observations and user-testing interviews.
Results: this is a protocol for the pilot study; we will present the preliminary results at the Cochrane Colloquium in Santiago.
Conclusions: assessing how the IHC primary school resources work in our context and, if necessary, adapting them to our context will allow us to implement new, relevant and innovative learning resources to enable children to assess claims about treatment effects and make informed health choices.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: the IHC project involves children and teachers, who have been engaged in designing and evaluating the IHC primary school resources. They will be further involved in the contextualisation of the IHC resources.