An educational intervention to enable children to assess claims about the benefits and harms of treatments

The Informed Health Choices project aimed to teach children to think critically about health claims and choices. The goal was to enable them to make informed personal choices, participate in policy debates and contribute to informed health policy decisions when they are older – as patients, future health professionals, future policy makers and citizens. The first objective of this thesis was to develop resources that teach primary school children in Uganda to assess health claims and make informed health choices. The second objective was to evaluate the impact of the resources on children’s ability to think critically about health claims and choices. The third objective was to explore unintended consequences and factors that might affect scaling up use of the resources. The fourth objective was to ascertain if children retained what they learned for at least one year