Currently submitted to: JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting
Date Submitted: Jun 14, 2026
Open Peer Review Period: Jun 15, 2026 - Aug 10, 2026
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
NOTE: This is an unreviewed Preprint
Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint (What is a preprint?). Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn (a note "no longer under consideration" will appear above).
Peer review me: Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period (in this case, a "Peer Review Me" button to sign up as reviewer is displayed above). All preprints currently open for review are listed here. Outside of the formal open peer-review period we encourage you to tweet about the preprint.
Citation: Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author).
Final version: If our system detects a final peer-reviewed "version of record" (VoR) published in any journal, a link to that VoR will appear below. Readers are then encourage to cite the VoR instead of this preprint.
Settings: If you are the author, you can login and change the preprint display settings, but the preprint URL/DOI is supposed to be stable and citable, so it should not be removed once posted.
Submit: To post your own preprint, simply submit to any JMIR journal, and choose the appropriate settings to expose your submitted version as preprint.
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Pediatric Asthma Educational Pamphlets in Japan: A Quality Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Child-centered care, including informed assent, requires clear educational materials, yet the accessibility of pediatric asthma pamphlets in Japan remains unexamined.
Objective:
We conducted a descriptive evaluation of publicly available Japanese-language pediatric asthma pamphlets using the Clear Communication Index (CCI).
Methods:
Eighteen pamphlets were collected via an internet search conducted on October 21, 2025, supplemented by direct requests for materials used in clinical practice; these were categorized by content (pathophysiology vs. treatment/testing) and target audience (families vs. children). Within each category, two raters selected the page spread judged to provide the most concise summary, yielding 31 page spreads for evaluation, which were independently scored.
Results:
CCI scores ranged from 10.0% to 88.9% (median 73.3%), all short of the ≥90% clarity benchmark. Scores did not differ significantly by content type or intended audience (p > 0.05). Domain scores were lowest for numeric information and risk communication.
Conclusions:
Current Japanese-language pediatric asthma pamphlets do not meet recommended clarity standards, highlighting the need to better communicate quantitative information and risks in materials intended to support children’s understanding and participation in care.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.