Abstract
Introduction: The Klang district has seen a significant increase of dengue cases by 154.3% from 867 cases in 2021 to 2,205 cases in 2022. One of the strategies to address this epidemic is to implement large scale community cleaning programs, namely in high risk dengue outbreak localities, with the objective of raising awareness of dengue disease and prevention, as well as empower the local communities to conduct clean-up activities on a regular basis.
Methods: This study assesses the participation level from the local community in a recent dengue control program event. The selected suburban locality was a recurrent hotspot area in Taman Sri Muda, Shah Alam comprising of 709 households of local and foreign citizens. The program 's focus was mainly on community clean-up of the locality. Strategies to enhance community participation included scheduled daily announcements of the event within the locality, via loudspeaker, through social media, flyers and personal persuasion house to house in the days leading up to the event. The local neighborhood task force and COMBI teams as well as other government and non-government agencies were also roped in. To attract the local community, health education activities targeting all age groups were also organized. An online questionnaire was used to gauge willingness of the household to attend the event in the days preceding and thus tailor our event promotion activities accordingly. We targeted participation of 100 people from the locality based on actual turn up rates from past events. Data was analysed using Microsoft Excel.
Results: Only 46 responses were obtained for willingness to attend the event. However, 76.0% of these respondents indicated their willingness to attend, while 17.5% and 6.5% indicated they ""may attend"" and ""will not attend"" respectively. The estimated people attending the event was 123, majority being adults (66.7%). The actual number of participants on the event day was 199, majority being adults (86.9%). There was good participation from the community in all health education related activities organised such as explorace, health talks and quizzes. Discussion & Conclusion: Traditionally, community level clean-up programs have been met with poor response from the community, especially in urban and suburban settings. Fortunately, this event was deemed a success as the participation by the local community exceeded our set target by 99%. Some of the reasons could be the aggressive approach used together with local leaders in approaching each household with information of the event. Another main pull factor for the event was the interesting array of activities organized. The use of online questionnaire was something new to gauge interest to participate. Although, the response from each household was poor, it did give us an idea of the estimated number of participants beforehand, and thus guiding us in ramping up follow through health promotion activities. In conclusion, this study revealed that with aggressive health promotion strategies targeting the whole community, it is possible to dramatically enhance participation from the local community for clean-up events.
Links
- https://apcph.cphm.my/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/APCPH2022-P-43.pdf
- https://apcph.cphm.my/wp-content/uploads/wpforms/1176-1e04940bb5d885bf8711ed1909[...]
BibTeX (Download)
@proceedings{APCPH2022-P-43,
title = {Enhancing Community Participation in a Dengue Control Program Event in a Sub-urban Setting},
author = {Ruben Ramakrishnan and Gurpreet Kaur and Muhamad Taufiq Othman and Ravikanth Perumal and Siti Rohana Saad},
url = {https://apcph.cphm.my/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/APCPH2022-P-43.pdf
https://apcph.cphm.my/wp-content/uploads/wpforms/1176-1e04940bb5d885bf8711ed19095a89ed/7th-APCPH-Poster-8fa1e401c6d91f57d5610fe0528ddcde.pdf},
year = {2022},
date = {2022-08-02},
urldate = {2022-08-02},
issue = {7},
abstract = {Introduction: The Klang district has seen a significant increase of dengue cases by 154.3% from 867 cases in 2021 to 2,205 cases in 2022. One of the strategies to address this epidemic is to implement large scale community cleaning programs, namely in high risk dengue outbreak localities, with the objective of raising awareness of dengue disease and prevention, as well as empower the local communities to conduct clean-up activities on a regular basis.
Methods: This study assesses the participation level from the local community in a recent dengue control program event. The selected suburban locality was a recurrent hotspot area in Taman Sri Muda, Shah Alam comprising of 709 households of local and foreign citizens. The program 's focus was mainly on community clean-up of the locality. Strategies to enhance community participation included scheduled daily announcements of the event within the locality, via loudspeaker, through social media, flyers and personal persuasion house to house in the days leading up to the event. The local neighborhood task force and COMBI teams as well as other government and non-government agencies were also roped in. To attract the local community, health education activities targeting all age groups were also organized. An online questionnaire was used to gauge willingness of the household to attend the event in the days preceding and thus tailor our event promotion activities accordingly. We targeted participation of 100 people from the locality based on actual turn up rates from past events. Data was analysed using Microsoft Excel.
Results: Only 46 responses were obtained for willingness to attend the event. However, 76.0% of these respondents indicated their willingness to attend, while 17.5% and 6.5% indicated they ""may attend"" and ""will not attend"" respectively. The estimated people attending the event was 123, majority being adults (66.7%). The actual number of participants on the event day was 199, majority being adults (86.9%). There was good participation from the community in all health education related activities organised such as explorace, health talks and quizzes. Discussion \& Conclusion: Traditionally, community level clean-up programs have been met with poor response from the community, especially in urban and suburban settings. Fortunately, this event was deemed a success as the participation by the local community exceeded our set target by 99%. Some of the reasons could be the aggressive approach used together with local leaders in approaching each household with information of the event. Another main pull factor for the event was the interesting array of activities organized. The use of online questionnaire was something new to gauge interest to participate. Although, the response from each household was poor, it did give us an idea of the estimated number of participants beforehand, and thus guiding us in ramping up follow through health promotion activities. In conclusion, this study revealed that with aggressive health promotion strategies targeting the whole community, it is possible to dramatically enhance participation from the local community for clean-up events.},
howpublished = {published online at https://apcph.cphm.my},
note = {Type: POSTER PRESENTATION; Organisation: Pejabat Kesihatan Daerah Klang},
keywords = {Community, Dengue, Participation, Sub-urban},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {proceedings}
}