Background:
In Brazil, health journalism is not part of the journalism undergraduate curriculum. Very few communication professionals are familiar with concept of evidence-based health care (EBH). Unsurprisingly, Brazilian newspapers, magazines and TV programs are full of false/unbalanced health news stories about treatment/supplement benefits without any scientific evidence. This situation will only change if young journalists receive training about EBH and where to find robust evidence. A team of researchers from the Brazilian Cochrane Center and teachers from the country's top-ranking journalism university created a short course to teach young journalists about basic EBH concepts and how to produce good-quality health stories.
Objectives:
To describe the first EBH course for young Brazilian journalists and participants' satisfaction.
Methods:
We designed a randomized clinical trial, which compared a wait-list group versus an evidence-based health course group. The duration of the course was seven classes of about four hours each (28 hours in total). We obtained a convenience sample of 30 participants for each group. All 60 participants performed a test to evaluate their general knowledge in evidence-based health care. A second test will be applied to all students after the end of the course period. Our pre-planned main outcome is the mean difference in the score between the pre- and post-intervention evaluation.
Results:
We included 60 participants. The mean age of the participants was 21.26 (standard deviation (SD) 2.5). There was a predominance of female participants: 80% (48/60) were female. The first phase of the trial has already been completed and the second group of participants should be attending the course next year.
Conclusions:
This initiative could contribute to the improvement of health news and disseminate the concept of evidence-based medicine to communication professionals, especially journalists.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement:
Improving the knowledge of journalists may impact directly on the quality of news related to health and thus people's knowledge and adherence to the best evidence.
