Diabetes awareness amongst indigenous language groups needs to be presented in a culturally sensitive manner. This study presents the use of traditional folk media to convey diabetes messages to adults attending public health care services in a sub-district in the Free State province of South Africa. A quasi-experimental pre-test post-test design was employed and random sampling of public health care services (n=26) was done in order to sample three services for control/experimental sites respectively. Conveniently selected participants (n=183) underwent pre and 4-week post-testing using questionnaires. Experimental group participants received six key diabetes messages conveyed via storytelling (n=2), poetry (n=2), and song/ dance (n=2). The profile of participants in both groups was similar. Responses to messages from pre-test to 4-week post within the experimental group for storytelling, poetry, song and dance were statistically significant. Comparing the experimental and control group change from pre-test to 4-week post, statistically significant differences were found for one message using storytelling and another using poetry. The authors conclude that traditional folk media can be used to raise diabetes awareness among indigenous language groups.
This article reports on the PPI itself, its information, and language usage in the texts, as tested infocus-group sessions, using content analysis. Quantitative readability assessments of selectedPPIs revealed that the texts were mostly “difficult” or “very difficult”. However, readability relies notonly on text variables, but also on interaction between reader and text. From the findings, certainrecommendations are suggested to enhance the reader accessibility and cultural competenceof such documents. If PPIs, as a health communication tool, can be seen to be valuable andeasily comprehensible sources of medication information, they can fulfil a necessary role in healthliteracy, especially in a multicultural, developing country such as South Africa, one typified byhuge class differences and where more than two-thirds of its households fall within the lower- tomiddle-income groups.
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