Effectiveness of Leader Village Health Volunteers Training Program on Preventing Cholangiocarcinoma in Thailand: Advantages for High-Risk Area with Limited Public Health Personnel

Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) still affects the health of rural people in northeast Thailand. Most people had a high level of overall risk according to CCA risk assessment in 2014. The question is how to make prevention of CCA as cost-effective as possible. The most appropriate answer is that someone should become a health leader to transfer knowledge to the public. This is the reason for developing the training program for village health volunteers (VHVs)—who play the role of change agents—to transfer knowledge to villagers. As for the evaluation of success, it is not evaluated if VHVs have increased knowledge or not, but it is assessed if people have better knowledge/attitudes, which lead to the correct behavior modification or not. After the program had been implemented for 2 years, people were evaluated on knowledge, attitudes, perception, and satisfaction with the operation of VHVs in providing people with the knowledge and ability to prevent CCA. It was found that people had a higher level of knowledge and attitudes in preventing CCA than before implementing the program. Also, they perceived that VHVs transferred knowledge to villagers so that they had the ability to prevent CCA. Nowadays, VHVs in the digital era (VHVs 4.0) is very useful in solving CCA problems in Thailand because they are the main drivers of success. Potential development of VHVs together with use of digital technology is an advantage for high-risk area with limited public health personnel.