Effectiveness of a Health Promotion Program on Reducing Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption among Health Village Volunteers in Tak Province

Abstract

This study was a quasi-experimental research with the objective to assess the effectiveness of a health promotion program on reducing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption among health village volunteers in Tak province. The samples consisted of 70 health village volunteers in Tak province selected through purposively sampling method; and were divided into 35 individual in the experiment group and 35 in the controlled group. The experiment group was provided with a health promotion program on reducing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption based on the Theory of Planned Behavior while the control group provided with regular health promotion services. Data were collected using six questionnaires, with content validity assessed using the index of congruence (IOC) ranging between 0.67 and 1.00. The reliability of the questionnaires was measured by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of which the outcome for attitudes towards reducing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, intentions, and behavior of sugar-sweetened beverage consumption was 0.80, 0.79, 0.85, 0.86, and 0.88 respectively. Descriptive statistics including percentages, means, and standard deviations were used for data analysis. The effectiveness program of the between groups was tested using independent t-test and those within group was tested using paired t-test statistics. The study revealed that after the program ended, mean scores of attitudes towards reducing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, subjective norm, perceive behavioral control and intention to reduce sugar-sweetened beverages consumption were greater than before intervention and the control group. After the intervention, mean score of the behavior of sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and body mass index (BMI) in the experimental group was significantly less than mean scores before the program and those of the control group (p<0.05). Consequently, the health promotion program effectively encouraged village health volunteers to reduce their consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. Therefore, thsi approach should be widely implemented to reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages among health village volunteers, aiming to prevent non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and serve as a model for healthy behaviors at community level.