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Health Promotion International Advance Access published online on January 4, 2006
Health Promotion International, doi:10.1093/heapro/dai034
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© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Article

Evaluation of the Healthy Village Program in Kapit District, Sarawak, Malaysia

ANDREW KIYU 1, ASHLEY A. STEINKUEHLER 2, JAMILAH HASHIM 1, JOHN HALL 2 *, PETER F. S. LEE 3, and RICHARD TAYLOR 4

1 Sarawak Health Department, Sarawak, Malaysia
2 University of Sydney, School of Public Health, Sydney, Australia
3 Kapit Divisional Health Office, Sarawak Health Department, Sarawak, Malaysia
4 University of Queensland, School of Population Health, Queensland, Australia

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
JOHN HALL, E-mail: johnh{at}health.usyd.edu.au


  Abstract

SUMMARY Sarawak, Malaysia has a large population of ethnic minorities who live in longhouses in remote rural areas where poverty, non-communicable diseases, accidents and injuries, environmental hazards and communicable diseases all contribute to a lower quality of life than is possible to achieve in these regions. To address these issues and improve the quality of life for longhouse people, the Kapit Divisional Health Office implemented the World Health Organization's Healthy Village programme in 2000. An evaluation was undertaken in 2003 to determine physical and behavioural changes resulting from the programme. The main changes evaluated were those involving smoking habits, exercise habits, health screening, fire safety, environmental improvements and food preparation and hygiene. A qualitative evaluation was conducted using participant observation and key-informant interviews, focus groups and observation. Results indicate that the programme is inspiring changes in various behavioural and physical characteristics of the study population. It is clear that the Healthy Village programme is a widely accepted way of improving health outcomes in longhouses, and that it is succeeding in making beneficial health changes.

Keywords: healthy village; evaluation; Sarawak; longhouse; rural.
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