Search

Aim: The aim of this prospective meta‐analysis was to synthesize the results of three cluster‐randomized trials of an intervention designed to teach lower‐secondary school students (age 14–16) to think critically about health choices. Methods: We conducted the trials in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. The intervention included a 2‐ to 3‐day teacher training workshop, digital resources, and ten 40‐min lessons. The lessons focused on nine key concepts. We did not intervene in control schools. The primary outcome was a passing score on a test (≥9 of 18 multiple‐choice questions answered correctly). We performed random effects meta‐analyses to estimate the overall adjusted odds ratios. Secondary outcomes included effects of the intervention on teachers. Results: Altogether, 244 schools (11,344 students) took part in the three trials. The overall adjusted odds ratio was 5.5 (95% CI: 3.0–10.2; p < 0.0001) in favor of the intervention (high certainty evidence). This corresponds to 33% (95% CI: 25–40%) more students in the intervention schools passing the test. Overall, 3397 (58%) of 5846 students in intervention schools had a passing score. The overall adjusted odds ratio for teachers was 13.7(95% CI: 4.6–40.4; p < 0.0001), corresponding to 32% (95% CI: 6%–57%) more teachers in the intervention schools passing the test (moderate certainty evidence). Overall, 118 (97%) of 122 teachers in intervention schools had a passing score. Conclusions: The intervention led to a large improvement in the ability of students and teachers to think critically about health choices, but 42% of students in the intervention schools did not achieve a passing score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: People of all ages are flooded with health claims about treatment effects (benefits and harms of treatments). Many of these are not reliable, and many people lack skills to assess their reliability. Primary school is the ideal time to begin to teach these skills, to lay a foundation for continued learning and enable children to make well-informed health choices, as they grow older. However, these skills are rarely being taught and yet there are no rigorously developed and evaluated resources for teaching these skills. Objectives: To develop the Informed Health Choices (IHC) resources (for learning and teaching people to assess claims about the effects of treatments) for primary school children and teachers. Methods: We prototyped, piloted, and user-tested resources in four settings that included Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Norway. We employed a user-centred approach to designing IHC resources which entailed multiple iterative cycles of development (determining content scope, generating ideas, prototyping, testing, analysing and refining) based on continuous close collaboration with teachers and children. Results: We identified 24 Key Concepts that are important for children to learn. We developed a comic book and a separate exercise book to introduce and explain the Key Concepts to the children, combining lessons with exercises and classroom activities. We developed a teachers' guide to supplement the resources for children. Conclusion: By employing a user-centred approach to designing resources to teach primary children to think critically about treatment claims and choices, we developed learning resources that end users experienced as useful, easy to use and well-suited to use in diverse classroom settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]