To explore participants’ experiences of potential adverse effects of the Informed Health Choices secondary school intervention across three trial sites and to revise a framework of potential adverse effects of interventions to improve critical thinking about health choices.

This was a qualitative study. We extracted and analysed relevant data from separate process evaluations in each country. Data came from surveying teachers, observing lessons and group and individual interviews with students, teachers and other stakeholders. We modified and applied framework analysis, including five stages: (1) development of an initial framework of potential adverse effects, (2) familiarisation with the data, (3) indexing, (4) abstraction and synthesis and (5) revising the framework. We applied reflexive strategies individually and as a team.

Lower secondary school in five randomly sampled subcounties of Kisumu County in Kenya, districts representing all five provinces in Rwanda, and six districts in the central region of Uganda, between 2022 and 2024.

Students and teachers in the intervention arms of the trials, parents of students in the intervention arms and administrators at intervention schools, as well as curriculum developers and policy-makers.

The intervention involved providing teachers with a 2–3-day training workshop, and digital classroom resources, including lesson plans for 10 lessons to be delivered over the course of one semester.

We generated findings about potential increases in adverse misunderstandings, anxiety related to transfer of learning, adversely experienced cognitive dissonance, work or schoolwork-related stress, inequity, conflicts and waste. The revised framework includes the same categories of potential adverse effects as our initial framework: decision-making harms, psychological harms, equity harms, group and social harms, waste and other harms. We revised other elements of the framework, including definitions of the categories and its structure.

This study provides insight into the potential adverse effects of interventions to improve critical thinking about health choices. The findings complement those of the trials and country-level process evaluations.