Factors Promoting Participatory Communication to Create Health Communication Behavior in the Community

Abstract

Traditionally, Thai people have tended to perceive healthcare as being the responsibility of only public health officers. As a result of this realization, the 11^th National Health Development Plan and District Health System Policy created a new vision: healthcare operations should be adopted by several sectors. This research was meant to study the means of communication based on the concepts of health communication behavior and to analyze the communication factors that lead to the success of communities regarding health communication. The qualitative research method, employed the in-depth interview technique for data collection. For this purpose, the researcher selected 20 key informants involved in community health communication. The responses revealed that successful communities still congruently utilize the three concepts of health communication behavior: education, promotion, and communication, depending on the current health situations to choose the suitable ones to be adapted for use. As for the communication factors, they consisted of four factors: (1) public health officers extended their viewpoints toward other sectors to be health communicators; (2) a variety purposes for exhibiting messages; (3) integration of various types of media; and (4) locals could be health communicators. These results can be adjusted for policy implementation by the Office of Disease Prevention and Control, in Bangkok, and its subordinate provinces to focus on the communication factors in community health communication operations.

Keywords: communication factors, means of communication, health communication behavior