Prototyping Community to decrease Saltiness for reducing chronic diseases in Health Area 3, 2019

Abstract

This study was a Participatory Action Research that applied the prevention and control of chronic non-communicable diseases guidelines by taking the community-based learning: the Community Based Intervention for Non-Communicable Diseases. The two objectives were to develop a prototyping community for changing the salty consumption behavior model and to evaluate the effectiveness of the model that was developed. The mixed-method design was divided into 2 phases; the first phase; was to develop a prototyping community for the salty consumption behavior model in the third regional Health, and the second phase; was to implement the salty consumption behavior model that was developed before. Then proceed to collect qualitative data by focus group discussion from 10 informants that were selected by purposive simple random sampling and quantitative data collection by using the survey of salty food consumption behavior from 40 people in the community, consisting of community leaders, relevant staff in the community, village health volunteers, housewives, and youth that were selected by systematic random sampling. Qualitative data were analyzed by content analysis, and quantitative data were analyzed with descriptive statistics.  The comparative mean before and after the consumption behavior of salty food was analyzed by paired samples t-test statistics. The results of the study revealed that the development of the health behavior change model consisted of 5 measures; 1. Public relations, 2. Request for cooperation from related parties to participate in the operation, 3. Conduct training to educate, 4. Organize a community forum, and 5. Follow-up and evaluation. The behavioral assessment presented that most of the samples have reduced salty food consumption and the mean scores of salty consumption behavior after the operation were significantly different at the 0.001level. Therefore, public health officials and relevant agencies in the community should promote and support the community leaders as role models in health behavior change and encourage people in their care to behave properly consumption.  Furthermore, the results of this kind of study should be extended to other areas with chronic non-communicable disease problems.