Health Education Research Advance Access originally published online on October 17, 2007
Health Education Research 2007 22(6):918-930; doi:10.1093/her/cym048
The development and evaluation of written medicines information for Type 2 diabetes
Faculty of Pharmacy—Building A 15, Room S114, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, 2006, Australia
* Correspondence to: D. Y. L. Lee. E-mail: dlee4027{at}usyd.edu.au
Written Medicines Information (WMI) is regarded as a key component in diabetes consumer education. In Australia, there is a paucity of WMI that specifically tailors to the extensive array of medicines used for the lifelong management of Type 2 diabetes. This research project aimed to employ a novel framework, the Consumer Involvement Cycle, to investigate consumer perspectives and needs of medicines information for Type 2 diabetes and develop appropriate WMI for the Type 2 diabetes population. The Consumer Involvement Cycle involved people with Type 2 diabetes and health professionals (HPs) working in partnership to design a series of WMI, incorporating a range of consumer-conceived ideas and concepts with professional evaluation from an expert panel of reviewing HPs. A total of 12 leaflets were developed. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score for the leaflets was approximately 8.0, which is considered to be fairly easy, in other words easily understood by a large proportion of the general public. The Consumer Involvement Cycle was validated as a useful framework in developing and evaluating appropriate consumer information. Consumer perspectives should be sought and well incorporated throughout the process of designing and assessing educational materials intended for consumer use.
Received on May 23, 2006; accepted on July 20, 2007