The Effectiveness of a Health Literacy Development Program for Preventing Drug Use among Methamphetamine Addicts in Loei Province
Keywords:
Health literacy, Among Methamphetamine-Addicted Patients, drug use preventionAbstract
Drug problems severely impact the health, economy, and national security. Loei Province, a border area adjacent to the Lao PDR, continues to report a large number of drug users and addicts. Therefore, developing health literacy is a crucial approach to preventing drug relapse. The objective of this research was to compare health literacy between the experimental group and the comparison group. This was a two-group quasi-experimental study with pre- and post-test measurements. The sample consisted of 392 methamphetamine-dependent patients from 14 districts in Loei Province, divided into an experimental group and a comparison group of 196 patients each. The study was conducted between October 2024 and September 2025. Research instruments included a health literacy development program based on Nutbeam's concept and a questionnaire with reliability values of $0.71–0.84$. Data were analyzed using Paired t-test and Independent t-test statistics.
The results showed that the experimental group's health literacy score increased by 25% (from 54.53 to 68.16 points, p<0.001), and drug prevention behavior increased by 25.5% (from 32.16 to 40.36 points, p<0.001), while the comparison group showed no change. The most effective aspects were communication skills (38.5% increase), media literacy (35.1% increase), and health knowledge and understanding (30.4% increase).
The health literacy development program was effective in enhancing the health literacy and drug prevention behavior of methamphetamine-dependent patients. It can be applied in other areas for the sustainable prevention of drug problems.
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