PCORI

Maternal and child health information available through mass media is often confusing and contradictory, posing considerable challenges in delivering important research results and related recommendations, which may be based on limited evidence or flawed interpretation. For this reason, the March of Dimes has devoted significant resources to identifying ways to communicate most effectively with multiple target audiences, including pregnant women, healthcare professionals, and caregivers. Our organization has dedicated similar degrees of effort to facilitating the communication and use of maternal and child health best practices for health care professionals. We strongly believe that engaging consumers in the translation process would help ensure that information is clear to both consumers and caregivers. Testing comprehension is a critical step in developing materials to convey information to consumers. Focus groups or other methods of engaging the “average consumer” may be effective means for testing level of comprehension. While assuring the information is written at the appropriate grade level is important, it is also important to convey context and limitations of research to aid in interpretation of these results.