Prioritizing the health education needs based on community participation: AHP method

Prioritizing Community-Based Intervention Programs for Improving Treatment Compliance of Patients with Chronic Diseases: Applying an Analytic Hierarchy Process

The purpose of this study was to apply multicriteria decision making and an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model for assessing sustainable management of hypertension and diabetes. Perception of two alternative health care priorities was also investigated. One priority was improving treatment compliance of patients with hypertension and diabetes. The other priority was strengthening the healthcare system for continuous care. Our study design to evaluate community-based intervention programs for hypertension and diabetes was developed using brainstorming, Delphi techniques, and content analysis along with literature review. We finally proposed a hierarchical structure of the AHP model with 50 third sub-criteria in six levels. By surveying this AHP questionnaire to a total of 185 community health practitioners in Korea, we found that improving treatment compliance of patients with chronic diseases should be relatively more important than strengthening the healthcare system. Further research is needed to expand survey subjects to primary care physicians and even policymakers of central government for the appropriate application of this AHP model.

Evaluation of Risk Perception of COVID-19 Disease: A Community-Based Participatory Study

OBJECTIVE

How people behave in a crisis depends on their understanding and evaluation of risk and vulnerability. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the Iranians' risk perception of coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

METHODS

An online survey was applied, which resulted in the collection of information on demographics, the 5 dimensions of risk perception (cognitive, political, social, cultural, and emotional), and trust in the government among the Iranian users of social networks. Data were analyzed by descriptive and analytical tests of SPSS (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY) software, and confirmatory factor analysis of Amos software.

RESULTS

A total of 364 persons from 20 provinces completed the questionnaire during February 25 to March 2, 2020. More than 80% of the participants believed that negligence and lack of close supervision of the authorities have led to the spread of COVID-19. The mean (SD) risk perception was 58.77 (± 10.11), indicating the medium level of risk perception of people. The second-order confirmatory factor analysis also indicated that cultural dimension had the highest positive correlation (0.96), emotional dimension had the highest negative correlation (-0.65), and social dimension had the least correlation with the risk perception model (0.08).

CONCLUSION

Iranians' risk perception of the COVID-19 outbreak is not optimal, and it seems necessary to improve it.