A Participatory Action Research on Community Health Promotion for Healthy Buriram : A Case Study of Nondindaeng Districts, Buriram Province

Abstract

Study Background: The successfully of Healthy Thailand strategies from Ministry of Public Health had many problems due to multiple factors especially : practice implementation to each province framework instruction, integration process from all steakholder, participation of people and community, top down co-ordination. The application of participation research and Healthy Thailand strategies suggested by Dr. Amorn Nondasut in strengthening community action for Healthy Buriram was implemented as research methodology.
Objectives: To measure the result of the application of participatory action research and Healthy Thailand strategies suggested by Dr. Amorn Nondasutra in strengthening community action for Healthy Buriram.
Research Design: Participatory Action Research : PAR (Research & Development)
Subject: population of 4,709 persons; 956 households in Tambol Sompoy, Nondindang district, Buriram province
Research Result: The research found that the paradigm shifting process created by forum setting for knowledge building and employmg multi-sectoral instructors had significantly increased knowledge, attitude" participation and healthy behaviors among target groups. The knowledge management process, using after action review techniques and best practices as mechanisms to create civil society enabled village core-personnel and villagers to analyze problems, planning and solve community problems. The consequence of these activities resulted in the attainment of 85.70% healthy village and 100% healthy sub-district. Besides that, it was found also that the availability of high potential village core persons, good networks and the ability of sub-district level personnel to create common vision together enabled the better preparation of budget supporting system and village fund-raising scheme as well. The availability of village civil society motivated the public participation and integration of health promotion strategy into village lifestyle.
Conclusion: The researchers had the recommendation that there should be the propagation of this project to other areas using the pilot implementation as the model, with core personnel of various level as instructors (Best Practice Implementation). The provincial authorities should apply the research result as the tool to search for appropriate model implementation. The ministerial authorities may use the research result as guideline for restructuring the local administrative system to be ready for decentralization scheme and networking among various organizations.