ArticleDrug safety2013
Evaluating the health literacy burden of Canada's public advisories: a comparative effectiveness study on clarity and readability.
Article in Drug safety, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Safety Data Sheets as a Hazard Communication Tool: An Assessment of Suitability and Readability.Safety and health at work · 2024Article
- The Readability and Quality of Web-Based Patient Information on Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: Quantitative Content Analysis.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- Readability and Suitability of COPD Consumer Information.Canadian respiratory journal · 2017Article
- Online Health Information Regarding Male Infertility: An Evaluation of Readability, Suitability, and Quality.Interactive journal of medical research · 2016Article
- Consumer Understanding, Preferences, and Responses to Different Versions of Drug Safety Messages in the United States: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Drug safety · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSignificant knowledge gaps exist related to evaluating health product risk communication effectiveness in a regulatory setting. To this end, Health Canada is assessing methods to evaluate the effectiveness of their health product risk communications in an attempt to identify best practices.
objectiveWe examined the health literacy burden of Public Advisories (PAs) before and after implementation of a new template. We also compared two methods for their usefulness and applicability in a regulatory setting.
methodsSuitability assessment of materials (SAM) and readability tests were run by three independent evaluators on 46 PAs (14 "Pre-format change" and 32 "Post-format change"). These tests provided adequacy scores for various health literacy elements and corresponding scholastic grades.
resultsPAs using the new template scored better, with an average increase of 18 percentage points (p < 0.001), on the SAM test. All of the 46 PAs evaluated were rated as "requiring a college/university education comprehension level" using readability tests. Results among readability tests were comparable.
conclusionImprovements made to Health Canada's PA template had a measurable, positive effect on reducing the health literacy burden, based on the SAM results. A greater focus on the use of plain language would likely add to this effect. The SAM test emerged as a robust, reliable, and informative health literacy tool to assess risk messages and identify further improvement efforts. Regulators, industry, and public sector organizations involved in communicating health product risk information should consider the use of this test as a best practice to evaluate health literacy burden.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.