title: Can an educational podcast improve the ability of parents of primary school children to assess the reliability of claims made about the benefits and harms of treatments: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.
abstract: Claims made about the effects of treatments are very common in the media and in the population more generally. The ability of individuals to understand and assess such claims can affect their decisions and health outcomes. Many people in both low- and high-income countries have inadequate aptitude to assess information about the effects of treatments. As part of the Informed Healthcare Choices project, we have prepared a series of podcast episodes to help improve people's ability to assess claims made about treatment effects. We will evaluate the effect of the Informed Healthcare Choices podcast on people's ability to assess claims made about the benefits and harms of treatments. Our study population will be parents of primary school children in schools with limited educational and financial resources in Uganda.
  
  
  
  This will be a two-arm, parallel-group, individual-randomised trial. We will randomly allocate consenting participants who meet the inclusion criteria for the trial to either listen to nine episodes of the Informed Healthcare Choices podcast (intervention) or to listen to nine typical public service announcements about health issues (control). Each podcast includes a story about a treatment claim, a message about one key concept that we believe is important for people to be able to understand to assess treatment claims, an explanation of how that concept applies to the claim, and a second example illustrating the concept. We designed the Claim Evaluation Tools to measure people's ability to apply key concepts related to assessing claims made about the effects of treatments and making informed health care choices. The Claim Evaluation Tools that we will use include multiple-choice questions addressing each of the nine concepts covered by the podcast. Using the Claim Evaluation Tools, we will measure two primary outcomes: (1) the proportion that 'pass', based on an absolute standard and (2) the average score.
  
  
  
  As far as we are aware this is the first randomised trial to assess the use of mass media to promote understanding of the key concepts needed to judge claims made about the effects of treatments.
  
  
  
  Pan African Clinical Trials Registry, PACTR201606001676150. Registered on 12 June 2016. http://www.pactr.org/ATMWeb/appmanager/atm/atmregistry?dar=true&tNo=PACTR201606001676150 .
authors.affiliation: Makerere University College of Health Sciences, New Mulago Hospital Complex, Clinical Research Building, Level 4, PO Box 7072, Kampala, Uganda. semakuladaniel@gmail.com.|University of Oslo, Blindern, Postboks 1130, 0318, Oslo, Norway. semakuladaniel@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0806-213X
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Semakula
authors.affiliation: Makerere University College of Health Sciences, New Mulago Hospital Complex, Clinical Research Building, Level 4, PO Box 7072, Kampala, Uganda.|University of Oslo, Blindern, Postboks 1130, 0318, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Allen
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nsangi
authors.affiliation: Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Nydalen, PO Box 4404, N-0403, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Matt
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Oxman
authors.affiliation: Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Nydalen, PO Box 4404, N-0403, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Astrid
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Austvoll-Dahlgren
authors.affiliation: Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Nydalen, PO Box 4404, N-0403, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rosenbaum
authors.affiliation: Great Lakes University of Kisumu, PO Box 2224-40100, Kisumu, Kenya.
authors.forename: Margaret
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kaseje
authors.affiliation: University of Rwanda, 101, KK 19 Av., University Avenue, PO Box: 5229, Kigali, Rwanda.
authors.forename: Laetitia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Nyirazinyoye
authors.affiliation: Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Nydalen, PO Box 4404, N-0403, Oslo, Norway.|University of Oslo, Blindern, Postboks 1130, 0318, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Atle
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fretheim
authors.affiliation: James Lind Initiative, Summertown Pavilion, Middle Way, Oxford, OX2 7LG, UK.
authors.forename: Iain
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Chalmers
authors.affiliation: Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Nydalen, PO Box 4404, N-0403, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Andrew D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Oxman
authors.affiliation: Makerere University College of Health Sciences, New Mulago Hospital Complex, Clinical Research Building, Level 4, PO Box 7072, Kampala, Uganda.
authors.forename: Nelson K
authors.initials: NK
authors.lastname: Sewankambo
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002755:Choice Behavior; D032882:Comprehension; D004522:Educational Status; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006266:Health Education / Q000379:methods*; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D057220:Health Literacy; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D008402:Mass Media; D010290:Parents / Q000193:education*; D012107:Research Design; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012307:Risk Factors; D012574:Schools; D013850:Thinking; D014454:Uganda
keywords: Critical appraisal; Critical thinking; EBM teaching resources; Evidence-based health care; Health literacy; Higher order thinking; Meta-cognition; Primary school curriculum; Science teaching; Treatment claims