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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13041

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Sansgiry SS, Chanda S, Shringarpure GS.
Impact of bilingual product information labels on Spanish-speaking adults' ability to comprehend OTC information.
Res Social Adm Pharm 2007 Dec; 3:(4):410-25
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18082876


Abstract:

BACKGROUND: There is a steady growth in the Spanish-speaking population in the United States. Language may be a barrier in accessing nonprescription medication information for the non-English-speaking population. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to compare consumer-reported ease of use, product knowledge, and intention to purchase over-the-counter (OTC) medications using bilingual Product Information Labels (PILs) and currently available label formats in a sample of Spanish-speaking consumers. METHODS: Participants were randomly selected from Spanish-speaking consumers shopping for OTC medications in pharmacy or grocery stores in Houston, TX. Participants viewed 3 label formats (old, new, and PILs) for acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and aspirin in a random order. Questionnaires in English and in Spanish were provided to consumers after they viewed each label format. Domains measured in the questionnaires included ease of use, product knowledge, and purchase intention. All responses were measured on a 7-point Likert-type scale. Data were recoded and analyzed using SAS (version 9.0) (SAS Institute Inc, Cary, NC) to obtain mean scores for each domain. Participants were classified according to language proficiency into “Spanish only” and bilinguals. Comparative statistics were computed to compare mean scores between label formats in each consumer category. RESULTS: A total of 225 questionnaires were collected. The mean (/-standard deviation) age of participants was 38.91 (/-11.95) years. A majority of respondents were Hispanic (97.75%), female (60.54%), and married (62.44%). Mean scores from viewing PILs on ease of use, product knowledge, and purchase intention were higher than those from viewing the other label formats. In the category of consumers who spoke Spanish only, mean scores of PILs were significantly higher as compared to those of old and new label formats (P<.05). CONCLUSION: Information provided in Spanish on PILs may be very helpful to the Spanish-speaking community when selecting nonprescription medications. Policy makers and health care providers should consider PILs as an effective means of reducing language barriers and providing OTC medication information to the Spanish-speaking population in the United States.

Keywords:
* Adult * Analysis of Variance * Data Collection * Data Interpretation, Statistical * Drug Labeling* * Drugs, Non-Prescription* * Female * Hispanic Americans * Humans * Language* * Male * Middle Aged * Patient Education as Topic * Questionnaires

 

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909