Behavior modification program by family health leader to reduce the occurrence of liver fluke among working age group at Khayung Sub-District, UthumphonPhisai District, Si Sa Ket Province.

Abstract

This quasi-experimental research aimed to study the result of a behavior modification program by family health leaders to reduce the occurrence of liver fluke among a working age group at Khayung Sub-District, UthumphonPhisai District, Si SaKet Province. The research was divided into 2 phases. The first phase was the development of family health leaders’ capacity for 1 week. The samples were community leaders, village health volunteers and head of household members, 20 subjects by purposive sampling. The samples gathered had the capacity to help the learning process for the experimental group in the second phase. The second phase was the behavioral modification process by family health leaders. The samples were taken from a working group aged from 15 to 59 years old who were chosen by a simple random sampling. The samples from this phase were divided into the experimental group and comparison group and there were 50 subjects per group. The experimental groups got the behavior modification activity that consisted of a stool examination before the experiment, the knowledge training, exchanging and learning group activity and home visiting and suggestion by the family health leaders for 12 weeks. The stool examination for liver fluke eggs was conducted 4 weeks after the experiment was finished. The data was collected by using questionnaires before and after the experiment. Quantitative data analysis was used by frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation meanwhile the statistics employed to test the hypothesis was paired t-test and independent t-test.

          The result has found that after the experiment group of family health leaders the average score of knowledge, the perception and the prevention behavior had increased over the previous experiments with statistically significant (p-value<0.05). The family health leaders could then take on the learning process of the experimental group in the second phase. The knowledge, the perception and the prevention behavior had increased over the previous experiments to more than the comparison group with statistically significant (p-value<0.05), and the prevalent rate of liver fluke disease had decreased by under 5%

          The success factor of this program was the consequence of empowering the family health leaders. One person can influenced the lives of the people in the family, especially in their eating habits. In order to understand and accept the lead to behavior change and having to follow the system in the area closely and continuously.