Health Village Development under the Concept of Sufficiency Economy with the Participation of the Community: a Case Study of Ban OO-Keaw, Moo 9, Tambon Khao Phra Bath, Chian Yai District, Nakhon Si Thammarat Province

Abstract

The present research was aimed to develop a health village operating model under the concept of sufficiency economy using the participation of people in Ban OO-keaw, Moo 9, Tambon Khao Phra Bat, Chian Yai district, Nakhon Si Thammarat province, and to study of factors affected to the participation of the community and strategy of health village for development under the concept of sufficiency economy. This participatory action research was conducted from October 2015 to March 2017. It was divided into 3 steps: 1) the preparation, to defined the area, accessed to the study area and to built relationships, 2) the operation, to studied and analyzed the factors that affect the participation of the community of the 35 main contributors by conducting depth interviews, group discussions and observation, and to studied the developmental strategy of health village following the concept of sufficiency economy of 50 research participants, and 3) the research evaluation.

          The results showed that both factors that promote and hinder the participation of the community consisted of the individual, management and the structure of the community. The individual factors included the availability of people to work with community in physical, mental, social, and spiritual dimensions; respect for human dignity; ability of leaders and the opportunity to develop. The management consists of flexibility of the management practices or rules used in the community and negotiations within. The factors for the structure of the community included kinship relationship, belief, community life to contribute of the development, sense of belonging, community expectations, value and cultural community conducive to participation and to see the importance of participation.

The development strategies of health community included:1) used the participation of the community in the disposed development, 2)set the goal from inspiration or belief, 3) communicated based on the mutual recognition and returned the data to the community, 4) empowered to think and build community plan with continuously operating, 5) supported act according to self and social capital, 6) encouraged and tracked a partner, 7) provided for the regular discussion, 8) made exemplary, 9) empowered same as family, 10) instituted volunteers and vocal developments and 11 ) proved opportunities and development options in the two parts such as 1) the tools used for development as the curriculum content composing of 3 topics including healthy, sufficiency economy and community participation, and 2) development mechanism that is community leaders with three characteristics including volunteer, belief in community life and self- confidence and team.

The results after used the sufficiency economy concept in developing of the health village revealed that people in the community were satisfied with the level of “most”. The fit and accordance with the community life was the level of “much”. People were taken pride and developed by voluntary. It got the apparent phenomenon of “Ban OO-Keaw sufficient Way of life”. The comparison of the adequately developmental health in four aspects: physique, mentality, society and spirit between before and after the study were different with statistical significance at p < 0.05. And the concept of sufficiency economy that was developed based on six fields included reducing expenses, additional revenue, savings, livelihood, natural resource conservation and care between before and after the study were different with statistical significance at p < 0.05.