Evaluation of Vietnamese written materials for diabetes prevention and management in Ho Chi Minh City

Abstract

Introduction

Clear and effective health information is necessary for the prevention and control of diabetes in Vietnam, and written materials are playing an ever-greater role in educating patients. The Vietnamese government stated that access to health information is critically important in improving people’s health overall. However, there are few practical instructions for designing clear and easy-to-understand written materials. We aimed to evaluate the clarity and understandability of Vietnamese written materials on diabetes and healthy lifestyles.

Methods

Twenty-six examples of diabetes-related written materials were collected in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. We created a Vietnamese translation of the Clear Communication Index (CCI), which was developed and validated by the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and scored the collected materials.

Results

The mean CCI total score was 38.4%, and none of the materials achieved a score of 90% or above, which is defined as a sufficient CCI level. The evaluation items that scored particularly poorly were the use of visual content with annotation, placing the main message in the top section or paragraph, explaining what was unknown about the topic, explaining numbers with words, explaining the nature of risk, and mentioning both risks and benefits.

Conclusions

None of the collected materials reached the sufficient CCI score. Use of visual aids, summary of the main points, and explanation of numerical information were particularly lacking. We recommend wider application of the CCI scoring system to improve the quality of written health materials used in clinical practice in Vietnam, which requires promotion of health literacy at the organizational level.

Keywords:

• Health literacy
• health information
• diabetes mellitus
• healthy lifestyle
• Vietnam

Acknowledgement

We thank Oliver Stanyon for editing a draft of this manuscript.

Author contributions

Phong Van Lam, Conceived the study question, concept and design, supervision of data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, writing the manuscript, data management, manuscript revision, supervision of study.

Aya Goto, Conceived the study question, concept and design, data analysis, data interpretation, manuscript revision, supervision of study.

Thanh Nhan T. Vuong, Data analysis, data interpretation, writing the manuscript, data management.

Anh Thu Q. Nguyen, Data analysis, data interpretation, writing the manuscript, data management.

Truc Dung Nguyen, Data collection.

Quynh Hoa Vu, Data collection.

Yokokawa Hirohide, Manuscript revision, supervision of study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

IRB approval

This work involved only the collection and analysis of health-related written materials, not in-person collection of data from human subjects. IRB approval was therefore not required.

Data availability statement

The dataset generated and analyzed in the present study is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 20K10539 (PI: Yokokawa Hirohide) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency Partnership Program “Promoting evidence-based patients-centered health services in southern Vietnam: University & medical association partnership initiative” from Japanese Fiscal Year 2017 to 2020 (PI: Aya Goto).