Community capacity for sustainable community-based dengue prevention and control: study of a sub-district in Southern Thailand

Objective: To assess the level of community capacity for dengue prevention and control and to study household environments and larval indices in southern Thailand. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was designed for the study, enrolling two communities with higher dengue incidence rate than the standard over the past five years. Data gathering was conducted by the dengue leader group (DLG), including 15 leaders and 15 non-leaders trained by the research team. The dengue community capacity assessment tool (DCCAT) for leaders (115 items, 14 domains) and non-leaders (83 items, 11 domains). Participants were selected by the DLG based on their communities' dengue risk. In the low-dengue incidence (LDI) community, 32 leaders and 177 non-leaders were selected; while in the high-dengue incidence (HDI) community, 31 leaders and 199 non-leaders were chosen. Results: The leaders from the LDI and the HDI communities demonstrated high levels of dengue community-capacity (360.47±58.82, 416.22±57.72). Non-leaders in the LDI community demonstrated a moderate level of dengue community capacity competence (205.90±60.76), while the non-leaders in the HDI community had a high level (254.78±50.34). Conclusions: These initial levels of dengue community capacity serves as a baseline for diagnosing each community. For a community that needed to improve its capacity, the DCCAT is essential tool to conduct a pre-post intervention assessment or a serial assessment. A participatory approach is taken to enable local communities to carry out anti-dengue efforts on their own, rather than have intervention by an outsider. © 2010 Hainan Medical College.