ESPE Abstracts

Introduction: Health literacy is a recognized concept in diabetes care. The newest vital sign (NVS) is an English instrument established to test health literacy using a nutrition label. No studies looked into health literacy in the Arab world. Our aim is to translate and validate the NVS tool to Arabic then test it on a pilot of Arabic-speaking caregivers of children with type 1 diabetes.

Methods: i) Production of the Arabic version: the English version of NVS was translated to Arabic then reviewed by a panel of expertise. Then the modified Arabic version was created and back-translated to English. ii) Translation validation: the original and back-translated to English versions were compared based on the comparability of language and similarity of interpretation by fluent English speaking assessors. iii) Pilot project: the Arabic version is used to measure health literacy among 20 caregivers of pediatric patients of type 1 diabetes.

Results: The mean age for the pilot group was 38.5±6.6 years. The mean duration of the test in Arabic was 4.0±1.2 min. Mean NVS score for the sample 3.2±2.1. None of the children of caregivers with limited literacy score had a good control (HbA1c ≤7.5%).

Conclusion: The Arabic version of the NVS tool seems to be an accepted tool to measure health literacy. Although bases on small numbers, limited health literacy of caregivers seems to be linked to inadequate glycemic control of their children. Further link should be studies on a larger sample to be generalized to Arabian populations.