Table 4 Key Concepts that are relevant for primary school children

Key Concepts taught in The Health Choices Book

CLAIMS: ARE THEY JUSTIFIED?

• Treatments may be harmful

• Personal experiences or anecdotes (stories) are an unreliable basis for assessing the effects of most treatments

• Widely used treatments or treatments that have been used for a long time are not necessarily beneficial or safe

• New, brand-named, or more expensive treatments may not be better than available alternatives

• Opinions of experts or authorities do not alone provide a reliable basis for deciding on the benefits and harms of treatments

• Conflicting interests may result in misleading claims about the effects of treatments

COMPARISONS: ARE THEY FAIR AND RELIABLE?

• Evaluating the effects of treatments requires appropriate comparisons

• Apart from the treatments being compared, the comparison groups need to be similar (i.e. ‘like needs to be compared with like’)

• If possible, people should not know which of the treatments being compared they are receiving

• Small studies in which few outcome events occur are usually not informative and the results may be misleading

• The results of single comparisons of treatments can be misleading

CHOICES: MAKING INFORMED HEALTH CHOICES

• Treatments usually have beneficial and harmful effects

Other Key Concepts prioritised for children

CLAIMS: ARE THEY JUSTIFIED?

• An outcome may be associated with a treatment, but not caused by the treatment

• Increasing the amount of a treatment does not necessarily increase the benefits of a treatment and may cause harm

• Hope or fear can lead to unrealistic expectations about the effects of treatments

• Beliefs about how treatments work are not reliable predictors of the actual effects of treatments

• Large, dramatic effects of treatments are rare

COMPARISONS: ARE THEY FAIR AND RELIABLE?

• People in the groups being compared need to be cared for similarly (apart from the treatments being compared)

•

• It is important to measure outcomes in everyone who was included in the treatment comparison groups

• Results for a selected group of people within fair comparisons can be misleading

• Reviews of treatment comparisons that do not use systematic methods can be misleading

• Well done systematic reviews often reveal a lack of relevant evidence, but they provide the best basis for making judgements about the certainty of the evidence

CHOICES: MAKING INFORMED HEALTH CHOICES

• Fair comparisons of treatments should measure outcomes that are important