Promoting Functional Health Literacy of Village Health Volunteers by ADRA Training Model

Rattanaprom, Wattana

Monday, 31 October 2011: 10:40 AM

Wattana Rattanaprom, RN, MSc, PhD
Faculty of Nursing, Suratthani Rajabhat University, Suratthani, Thailand

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to understand how to build functional health literacy.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to get idea from ADRA training model.

In recent years, Thai people have suffered from preventable diseases such as accident, drugs abuse, smoking, hypertension, diabetes mellitus and HIV-AIDS, all of which are increasing rapidly. These reflect well being of Thai people. The problem is lack of quality training and usually focusing on health-related contents rather than health literacy in the community.

The training program of 5 domains’ Functional Health Literacy (FHL) was implemented in June-July, 2010 at Taysampao Village, NakhonSiThamarat Province. The 5 domains are Access (Ac), Understanding (Un), Assessment (As), Utilization (Ut) and Communication (Co). Each of them were described and divided into 5 levels. The ADRA (Anticipatory Set-Development-Review-Assignment) training model was used for 6 sessions with 2 hour-weekly sessions for a 22-member Village Health Volunteers Group. The placement survey was conducted, followed by a 3 weekly survey. The data was presented in percentage of improvement compared with the previous survey.

The placement survey showed that Ut and Un fell into level 2, Ac, Co and As into level 1. Final survey revealed that Ac, Ut and Un were classified into level 4, As and Co were classified into level 3, respectively. The progress report showed that all of FHL were significantly improved. Ac was improved from 45.45, 62.50 and 25.64%. Un was improved from 2.17, 19.15 and 42.86%. As was improved from 29.17, 54.84 and 45.83%. Ut was improved from 19.15, 19.64 and 23.88%. Co was improved from 51.85, 29.27 and 41.51%, respectively.

The findings showed that the understanding of health-contents (Un) and healthy practices (Ut) were little improved. In addition, the analysis and recheck behavior (As) was moderately improved. Finally, the independent study of the health knowledge behavior (Ac) and self risk identification (Co) were substantially improved.

In conclusion, Functional Health Literacy of village health volunteers can be promoted through the ADRA training model.

See more of: Health Promotion Initiatives in the Community Setting
See more of: Oral Paper & Poster: Clinical Sessions