Authors : Pongsawat Rattanasang, Natchaporn Pichainarong, Roongrote Poomriew and Wongsa Laohasiriwong
Abstract: Thai people trend to consume more alcohol beverage. Alcohol consumption ranked 3rd as the most important cause of total life years lost by Thai. This research consisted of 2 phases. The cross sectional descriptive study was conducted in the first phase among 115 subjects at Ban Hua Nong, the experimental village and 164 subjects at Ban Khea Lek as the control village in Mahasarakham province to identify alcohol consumption problems. The second phase, randomized control trial aimed to develop and implement community empowerment in intervention program to reduce alcohol consumption. It was to determine the outcome of intervention program in terms of changing knowledge, attitude, participation, satisfaction, AUDIT score and blood examination from laboratory result among randomly sampling of 40 subjects from the experimental group who received the intervention and another 40 subjects from the control group. The study was conducted from November, 21, 2010 to April, 30, 2011. Data were collected using an interview an a questionnaire. Statistical analysis such as frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation and ANCOVA were used. The result showed that most of the subjects in experimental and control groups had alcohol consumption (54.78%, 46.34%), hazardous alcohol use (69.23%, 56.82%) used to have an accident related to alcohol consumption (17.31%, 14.77%). Comparisons the mean differences of variable scores on alcohol problems between both groups before and after the intervention such as knowledge, attitude, AUDIT, satisfaction, participation, uric acid, triglyceride and GGT of experimental group were statistically significant higher than the control group (p<0.05). However, the orther vaiables, SGOT and SGPT were not statistically different (p>0.05). It can be concluded that community involvement in an Intervention Program was successful for helping drinkers to reduce and stop drinking alcohol. This program should be widely implemented in other similar communities under the principles of community participation. Action research or clustered randomized control trial should be further appropriate research designs to test more measures to reduce alcohol consumptions in various settings and contexts.
Pongsawat Rattanasang, Natchaporn Pichainarong, Roongrote Poomriew and Wongsa Laohasiriwong, 2012. The Effect of Community Empowerment Intervention Program on Reducing Alcohol Consumption among Villagers in Mahasarakham Province, Thailand. The Social Sciences, 7: 159-165.