Public health research & practice
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Public Health Res Pract · Mar 2020
How readable are Australian multilingual diabetes patient education materials? An evaluation of national English-language source texts.
Multilingual patient education materials (PEMs) in Australia are normally prepared initially in English (source text) and then translated into other languages. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the source texts for publicly available multilingual diabetes PEMs in Australia were written at the reading level recommended by health literacy guidelines (eighth-grade reading level). ⋯ English-language source texts for national multilingual diabetes PEMs examined in this study were written at a readability level significantly higher than that recommended in health literacy guidelines. This was likely due to the use of polysyllabic words and complex medical terms, which are especially problematic when they are not defined. Improving readability of English-language source texts may help to ensure that the translated PEMs are more readable and accessible to their target readers. In conjunction with addressing other features that can make written materials easier to understand, this may help to better support diabetes self-management.
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Public Health Res Pract · Mar 2020
An evaluation of the 2016 influenza vaccination in pregnancy campaign in NSW, Australia.
Objectives and importance: Influenza vaccination in pregnancy has been funded under the Australian National Immunisation Program since 2010, yet uptake is suboptimal. We evaluated the 2016 New South Wales (NSW) Health influenza vaccination in pregnancy public information campaign.