Introduction: The presence of a clear message and addressing of the direct target audience facilitates knowledge transfer. This study examines the aforementioned factors and their determinants in the three (maternal care, diabetes, tuberculosis) health programs’ articles.

Methods: All research articles of studies conducted in the three-abovementioned topics from 2001 to 2006 that had been registered in databanks were searched. Basic science articles were deleted and the rest were examined for presence of a clear message and addressing of the direct target audience.

Results: The total number of articles possessing the inclusion criteria was 795. Only 12.2 % contained a clear message ‘and’ addressed the direct target audience. Examination of the abstracts showed that a clear message had a significant relationship with the abstract being formatted (P= 0.003). Upon studying the whole articles, we found that addressing of the direct target audience was significantly higher in health system research articles (P< 0.001).

Conclusion: It seems that defining a certain format for abstracts will have a positive impact on writing a clear message in articles. Another recommendation is to consider a section for target audiences in article formats.

  Hakim Research Journal 2009 11(4): 1- 7.