Does the use of the Informed Health Choices teaching resources improve the secondary students' ability to critically think about health in Uganda? A cluster randomised trial protocol

Background

To make well-informed choices, people must possess skills to assess the trustworthiness of health-related claims. It is important that young people learn to assess the reliability of claims to inform decisions, both when making their own choices and as citizens participating in a democracy. This trial aims to evaluate the effect of the Informed Health Choices (IHC) teaching resources on secondary school students’ ability to assess health-related claims and make informed choices.

Methods

This will be a two-arm cluster-randomised trial. We will randomise 80 lower secondary schools to evaluate the IHC secondary school digital teaching resources. The resources for teachers include 10 lessons to be delivered in a single school term, using lesson plans developed for classrooms equipped with only a blackboard or with a projector. Teachers in the intervention arm will be invited to a three-day teacher training workshop. Teachers in the control schools will continue teaching the national curriculum. Uganda’s National Curriculum Development Centre introduced a new competence-based curriculum in 2020. This curriculum has critical thinking as one of seven generic skills to be taught across all subjects. The curriculum does not explicitly include critical thinking about health. The IHC lessons address nine prioritised key concepts. We will use multiple choice questions – two for each key concept - to evaluate the student’s ability to assess claims and make informed choices. We will measure the proportion of students with a passing score at the end of the school term, and again after one year to assess retention of what was learned.

Expected results

Based on previous work done in Ugandan primary schools, we anticipate that the use of the teaching resources will lead to a large improvement in the lower secondary school students’ ability to assess claims and make informed health choices.