Anaphylaxis Campaign gains recognition asa quality provider of information

The Anaphylaxis Campaign is the latest organisation to be certified as a quality provider of health information as part of the Information Standard, a scheme supported by the Department of Health. The news of the Campaign’s success was announced on January 4th, 2012, following a rigorous assessment carried out by an independent body in November and December 2011.

The Information Standard was developed to help the public to find high-quality health and social care information. When people see the Information Standard quality mark on a document they can be assured that the information provided in that document is reliable.

Research has found that healthcare information available to people varies greatly in terms of quality, accessibility and availability.

The Information Standard can be part of helping people to:

• understand their health and care
• make effective decisions for themselves and their families
• help with uncertainty as to what information they should trust

The Anaphylaxis Campaign can now use the Information Standard to improve the way in which it develops its fact sheets, leading to an overall improvement in the quality of information available to people. Over time, people will begin to see more and more of the Campaign’s documents carrying the quality mark as they undergo a rigorous review.

There have been a number of calls for such a scheme over recent years including by the Consumers Association in 2003. The Department of Health commissioned specific research when deciding on the feasibility of the scheme and found:

• 77 per cent of people had looked up some form of health or social care information in the previous 12 months
• 75 per cent found it hard to work out what information was trustworthy or not
• 88 per cent felt that the proposed certification scheme was a good idea

These results were taken from a survey, conducted on behalf of The Information Standard scheme of 2,100 people in England in November 2010.

The Anaphylaxis Campaign was assessed for certification by G4S Assessment Services, a UKAS Accredited Certification body.

Angela Coulter, an independent healthcare analyst who advises on the scheme, commented: “Organisations that become certified members of the scheme, and therefore display the Information Standard quality mark on their health information materials, have proven that they adhere to the very highest standards of information production. The public can feel confident that if they see the Information Standard quality mark on health and social care websites or leaflets then the information can be trusted and relied upon.”

You can find out more about the scheme at www.theinformationstandard.org