The Safe Use Initiative and Health Literacy: Workshop Summary by Institute of Medicine of the National Academies

Author:Institute of Medicine of the National Academies
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Health and Medicine : Public Health and Prevention. Health and Medicine : Policy, Reviews and Evaluations
Publisher: NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
Published: 2010-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

An additional concern raised by Wendy Mettger of Mettger Communications, relates to adult learners who don’t understand terms such as acetaminophen, ibuprofen, or even active ingredient. She asked if those terms have been tested with consumers. Parker agreed that active ingredient is a difficult term for patients. She has an upcoming study showing that consumers think that acetaminophen and antihistamine are the same thing. Research has not focused on this area. She hopes to call attention to the problem of knowing what a product is. If there is agreement that to safely use a medication, the patient needs to know what it is before he or she takes it, then knowing what a product is comes to the forefront every time safe use of a medication is addressed. Bernard Dreyer added that a lot is known about what patients with low literacy need so they can understand a label. They need pronunciation guides and simple definitions. The problem is that the real estate on all labels is very minimal. But it is the only thing that is really going to help low literacy patients understand what is on the label.

Dreyer then asked what impact USP’s General Chapters have. Are they law of the land? Does the FDA play a role? Long responded that the USP sets voluntary standards, and now the USP will work with the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy to adopt the standard. The USP will also talk with the FDA about what role it might play to get the standards taken up.

One participant asked whether patients are involved in product and standard development. Bullman used the example of the NCPIE-developed program called “Maximizing Your Role as a Teen Influencer: What You Can Do To Help Teens Prevent Prescription Drug Abuse.” The content was derived from data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and other published research. NCPIE brought together 15 organizations that were all working on the same issue but had not worked together before.2 Representatives of school health, school psychologists, parent-teacher associations, Partnership for a Drug-Free America, and American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, came together. Messaging was focus tested in two states. Now that it is launched, three states are doing an assessment of up to 500 people who have been exposed to the workshop, asking questions before, after, then at 3-month intervals. It is a fairly extensive program.

2

See http://www.talkaboutrx.org/maximizing_role.jsp.

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