Public awareness of aphasia in New Zealand

Background: Awareness and knowledge of aphasia is limited among the public and in the healthcare sector despite considerable efforts being made internationally to address this. Advances in medical interventions have improved life expectancy following stroke so it is assumed that there are more people living with aphasia now than at any time in the past. Given this increase and the attempts to provide information in an accessible and timely manner we predicted that awareness and knowledge of aphasia would be improved compared to when it was last examined 10 years ago. Aims: This study sought to investigate whether public awareness of aphasia has improved since the original international study by Simmons-Mackie et al. in 2002. A second aim was to compare health professionals' awareness and knowledge of aphasia specifically with that of the general public. Methods & Procedures: A brief face-to-face survey was administered to ascertain awareness and knowledge of Parkinson's disease (PD), stroke, and aphasia, as well as the causes and symptoms of aphasia. A total of 300 people were surveyed (200 were members of the general public and a further 100 were health sector workers). Information was collected on age (ranging from 21-85 years), sex (125 males and 175 females), employment status, and ethnicity. The data were analysed to determine the number of individuals who had awareness and knowledge of the three conditions. A binary logistic regression was calculated to predict the factors most likely to influence awareness of aphasia. Outcomes & Results: Aphasia awareness was 30% for the whole sample and aphasia knowledge was 8%. When we separate out the general public from those in the health sector the results are quite different: 11% of the general public had awareness of aphasia and only 1.5% had knowledge, whereas 68% of those in the health sector had awareness and 21% met the criteria for basic knowledge of aphasia. When compared to knowledge and awareness of stroke and PD, these figures are very poor. Conclusions: Ten years after the first surveys, awareness and knowledge of aphasia remain disappointingly low. We suggest that, whatever the efforts to date, we need to substantially increase them to improve public and health sector awareness and knowledge of aphasia. Future initiatives must be directed towards providing adequate knowledge in order to increase the health outcomes for people with aphasia and their families.