Public Health Volunteers and Prevention of COVID-19: Lessons from Thailand

Abstract

The objectives of this research are (1) to study the roles of public health volunteers in the prevention of COVID-19 and (2) to study the problems and barriers of public health volunteers and the prevention of COVID-19. The quantitative research revealed that (1) when classified each aspect, it was found to be at the high level. These included the roles and participation in the awareness of disease severity, the participation in disease surveillance, disease prevention and control, respectively. However, the public relations aspect was at the moderate level. The results of the comparison were found on the basis of personal data. It was found that public health volunteers with different gender, age, marital status, education level, income had no different roles. The health volunteers have the duration, the number of times that the epidemic has been trained in the past year, number of times in contact with the sub-district health promotion hospital in the past year differently with the statistical significance at .05 level. The qualitative research revealed that there were problem of public cooperation, lack of cooperation problem, compensation problem, lack of necessary equipment, lack of understanding about COVID-19 prevention, and problem of excessive news perception giving people the chance to receive false information.