This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Jonathan Lomas, MA
McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario

JAMA. 1991;266(9):1217.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply.

—Dr Ellerbeck suggests that only the opinion leaders generated the changes seen in the OLE group and, in any event, the information provided to the OLE group may have improved compliance without the use of opinion leaders. Both are potentially valid criticisms of opinion leader strategies; neither, however, appears to apply to this study.

The opinion leaders managed only 30.4% of the eligible cases and, as stated in the article, "in no community did the opinion leader have the highest compliance rates." If the opinion leaders are removed from the analysis, the trial of labor and vaginal birth rates in the OLE group are, respectively, 33.1% and 21.6%—clearly, therefore, a community-wide phenomenon.

The design of the OLE intervention was based on existing research demonstrating that the isolated provision of even nontraditional educational material fails to improve practice.^1-3 We see no reason why our study would have been . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?