. Sathish Rajaa; . Shanthosh Priyan; . Subitha Lakshminarayanan; . Ganesh Kumar
Volume 9, Issue 9 , September 2019, , Pages 1-7
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over theirown health. Community involvement in social and environmental interventions tends to improvepeople’s ...
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BACKGROUND: Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over theirown health. Community involvement in social and environmental interventions tends to improvepeople’s health and quality of life. Self‑help groups (SHGs) primarily focus on microfinancing, therebyacting as a catalyst in bringing backward society to the mainstream. They possess huge potentialto influence the health of the community.OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study is to assess the willingness among SHGs for the involvementin health promotion activities and to assess their health information needs.MATERIALS AND METHODS: A community‑based, cross‑sectional study was conducted duringSeptember 2017 in rural Puducherry. All 86 SHGs in four selected villages were covered, and theirleaders were interviewed using a structured questionnaire on functioning of SHGs and their healthinformation needs. Willingness for health promotion activities was rated on an interest scale (1–100).RESULTS: Among the 86 heads of SHGs interviewed, 81 SHGs (94.1%) were registered. They weremainly involved in microfinancing. Health information needs expressed were cancer detection (45%),diabetes (60%), hypertension (56%) and vector‑borne diseases (63%). When asked to ratetheir willingness on an interest scale for health promotion activities, nearly 64% showed a greatinterest (i.e., score > 60). Majority were willing to work for noncommunicable disease‑related activitiessuch as provision of drugs (86%) and for screening of various cancers (84%).CONCLUSION: This study has shown that majority of SHG members have expressed willingnessfor the involvement in health‑related activities, thereby can be utilized as an important resource forhealth promotion in rural areas.
