The Result of the Program to Promote Safe Health Product Sales Literacy among Grocery Store Operators in Sing Buri Province.

Abstract

            The quasi-experimental study aimed to evaluate the effect of a program to promote safe health product sales literacy among grocery store operators in Sing Buri Province. The study assessed changes in safe health product sales literacy in grocery store operators before and after the program, and compared the proportion of grocery stores meeting the quality criteria of Good Rational Drug Use (G-RDU) and Good Safe Health Product (G-SHP) between an experimental group and a comparison group. Sixty grocery store owners in Bang Rachan district, Singburi were selected through simple random sampling and randomly assigned into an experimental group (30) and a comparison group (30). The experimental group participated in the literacy promotion program, while the comparison group did not. Data were collected using a grocery store inspection checklist from Thai FDA before and after the intervention. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics, including Paired t-test, Independent t-test,  Chi-square test and McNemar test with a significance level of 0.05.

            The results showed that after the program, the experimental group’s mean score on safe health product sales literacy significantly increased compared with the pre-test (3.92 ± 0.61 to 4.56 ± 0.32, p = 0.004), improving from a “good” to a “very good” level, while no statistically significant change was observed in the comparison group (4.01 ± 0.52 to 4.24 ± 0.51, p = 0.068). In addition, the experimental group had a significantly higher proportion of grocery stores meeting the G-RDU and G-SHP quality standards compared with the comparison group (G-RDU : 86.67% vs 60.00%, p = 0.020 and G-SHP : 86.67% vs 50.00%, p = 0.002). These findings indicate that the program effectively enhances the health literacy of grocery store operators and improves the safety standards of health product sales in community grocery stores. The program has the potential to be applied to develop quality grocery stores and strengthen consumer protection at the community level.