Abstract
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Background: The patients that experience adverse events are in the best position to report them, only if they were empowered to do so. Systematic community engagement and support to patients in a rural setting to monitor any potential harm from medicines should provide evidence for patient safety. Methods: This paper describes an uncontrolled before and after study aimed at assessing the effect of a community engagement strategy, the Community Dialogues and Sensitization (CDS) intervention between January and April 2017, on the knowledge, attitude and practice of reporting adverse drug events by community members in the two eastern Ugandan dis-tricts. A representative cross-sectional baseline household survey was done prior to the inter-vention in September 2016 (n=1034) and the end-line survey (n=827) in July 2017. Results: After implementation of the CDS intervention, there was an overall 20% (95% CI=16-25) increase in awareness about adverse drug events in the community. The young people (15-24 years) demonstrated a 41% (95% CI =31-52) increase and the un-educated showed a 50% (95% CI=37-63) increase in awareness about adverse drug events. The atti-tudes towards reporting increased overall by 5% in response to whether there was a need to report ADEs (95% CI =3-7). An overall 115% (95% CI =137-217) increase in the population that had ever experienced ADEs was also reported. Conclusion: Our evaluation shows that the CDS intervention increases knowledge, improves attitudes by catalyzing discussions among community members and health workers on health issues and monitoring safety of medicines.