Effectiveness of Alcohol Consumption Action in Communities by Health Teams

Abstract

The mandate of "health team" is to take active action in developing policies and measures or "alcohol actions" by health teams to reduce consumption of alcohol and its risks in the community. Nine provinces in the north eastern part of Thailand had been assessed for its implementation. Five out of 20 communities were selected based on selection criteria which comprised of 7 core implementation activities and had been active for the past 3 years. These communities were then compared with those communities without the health team. Data were collected during Jun to September 2015. Results from interviews with the health teams and analysis of secondary data from subdistrict health promoting hospitals showed that communities with alcohol actions had decreasing trend of alcohol consumption. Rates of alcohol consump-tion per 1,000 population among communities with alcohol actions ranged from 4.0-14.0 which also lower than the national average. As a result, the implementation of health team should be introduced to other areas to solve alcohol problems by community itself. The Department of Disease Control as the main policy implementer of this issue should support each community to set up health team including local government, community leaders, and sub-district health promoting hospitals.