Viroj Tangcharoensathien

International Health Policy Program, Thailand | IHPP

Increased misinformation circulating among the population during the COVID-10 pandemic can trigger rejection to take up vaccines. This study assesses the influence of vaccine information and other factors on vaccine acceptance in the Thai population. Between March and August 2021, six rounds of cross-sectional surveys through village health volunte...

This article is part of the Research Topic ‘ Health Systems Recovery in the Context of COVID-19 and Protracted Conflict ’. The third quarter of 2022 saw COVID-19 cases and deaths in Thailand reduced significantly, and high levels of COVID-19 vaccine coverage. COVID-19 was declared an “endemic” disease, and economic activities resumed. This paper re...

Objectives To describe the antibiotic use among hospitalized patients in Thailand. Methods A standardized cross-sectional point prevalence survey (PPS) modified from the WHO PPS protocol was conducted in 41 selected hospitals in Thailand. All inpatients who received an antibiotic at 9 a.m. on the survey date were enrolled. The total number of inpa...

Background: Understanding patterns of physical activity and sedentary behavior is essential, but evidence from low- and middle-income countries remains limited. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of physical activity and sedentary behavior in the Thai population; their sociodemographic correlates; and the contribution of specific domai...

The importance of health systems has been reinforced by the commitment of Low- and Middle-Income Countries (L&MICs) to pursue the targets of Universal Health Coverage, Health Security, and to achieve Health-related Sustainable Development Goals. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the fragility of health systems in countries of all income gro...

The importance of health systems has been reinforced by the commitment of Low- and Middle-Income Countries (L&MICs) to pursue the targets of Universal Health Coverage, Health Security, and to achieve Health-related Sustainable Development Goals. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the fragility of health systems in countries of all income gro...

Background Health, social and economic crises triggered by the Coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19) can derail progress and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. This commentary analyses the complex nexus of multi-dimensional impacts of the pandemic on people, prosperity, planet, partnership and peace. From our analysis, we generate...

Background Many countries implementing pro-poor reforms to expand subsidized health care, especially for the poor, recognize that high-quality healthcare, and not just access alone, is necessary to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. As the poor are more likely to use low quality health services, measures to improve access to health care need t...

The COVID-19 pandemic will not be the last of its kind. As the world charts a way towards an equitable and resilient recovery, Public Health and Social Measures (PHSMs) that were implemented since the beginning of the pandemic need to be made a permanent feature of health systems that can be activated and readily deployed to tackle sudden surges in...

Introduction: Health systems are complex. Policies targeted at health system development may be informed by health policy and systems research (HPSR). This study assesses HPSR capacity to generate evidence and inform policy in Ethiopia and Ghana. Methods: We used a mixed-methods approach including a self-administered survey at selected HPSR inst...

Progressive realization of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) requires health systems capacity to provide quality service and financial risk protection which supports access to services without financial hardship. Government health spending in low-income countries (LICs) has been low and heavily relied on external donor resources and out-of-pocket pay...

Objective This review assesses interventions and their effectiveness in mitigating psychological consequences from pandemic. Method Published English literatures were searched from four databases (Medline, PubMed, Embase and PsycINFO) from January 2020 and September 2021. A total of 27 papers with 29 studies (one paper reported three studies) met...

Background Private sector plays an import role in health service provision, therefore the engagement of private health facilities is important for ensuring access to health services. In Thailand, two of the three public health insurance schemes, Universal Coverage Scheme and Social Health Insurance, contract with private health facilities to fill g...

The early years of a child's life are the foundation for their future capability development. Poor health, hunger, poverty, low parental education, lack of parental interaction, high screen time, and poor housing environment hamper their development. There is little evidence of a link between early child development (ECD) and sociodemographic facto...

Despite Thailand having had universal health coverage (UHC) with comprehensive benefit packages since 2002, services are neither listed nor budget earmarked for COVID-19 responses. Policy decisions were made immediately after the first outbreak in 2020 to fully fund a comprehensive benefit package for COVID-19. The Cabinet approved significant addi...

This study aimed to estimate the prevalence and profile of food insecurity in households with children under 5 years old using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) in Thailand. We integrated FIES into the 2019 Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS). A total of 861 households were successfully interviewed with FIES. The Rasch model was app...

Parental interactions through play contributes significantly to child development of cognitive and executive functioning skills. In Thailand, there is little evidence of factors contributing to parental–child interactions. In response to SDG target 4.2.3 monitoring (the percentage of children under 5 years experiencing positive and stimulating home...

Effective Public Financial Management (PFM) systems are crucial during COVID‐19 pandemic to ensure timely mobilisation of sufficient resources and distribution to frontline service providers. All aspects of PFM, from budget acquisition to execution and expenditure reporting and auditing are important aspects in pursuing effective pandemic responses...

Background: In 2014, Indonesia launched a single payer national health insurance scheme with the aim of covering the entire population by 2024. The objective of this paper is to assess the equity with which contributions to the health financing system were distributed in Indonesia over 2015 - 2019. Methods: This study is a secondary analysis of...

Introduction: In 2019, only 14% of mothers in Thailand performed six-month exclusive breastfeeding. This study sought to understand the pathways that mothers in Bangkok Metropolitan took to achieve successful six-month exclusive breastfeeding. Methods: A total of 50 mothers living in Bangkok with children aged 6-12 months, who achieved and not a...

Thailand achieved Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in 2002 through three main public health insurance schemes; the tax-financed Civil Servant Medical Benefit Scheme (CSMBS) covers public sector employees and dependants (7.1% of total population), payroll-tax financed Social Health Insurance (SHI) Scheme covers private sector employees (17.2%), and t...

Background Increased Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) of diabetes and hypertension draws policy attention to improve effective coverage. This study assesses effective coverage of the two conditions in Thailand between 2016 and 2019. Method We estimated total diabetes and hypertension cases using age and sex specific prevalence rates for respect...

Background Lack of knowledge and awareness on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) can result in irrational use of antibiotics, which is one of the major drivers of AMR. One goal of the Thailand National Strategic Plan on AMR (2017-2021) is a 20% increase in public knowledge and awareness of antibiotic use and AMR by 2021. This study assesses antibiotic...

Background In response to an increased health burden from non-communicable diseases (NCDs), primary health care (PHC) is effective platform to support NCDs prevention and control. This study aims to assess Thailand’s PHC capacity in providing NCDs services, identify enabling factors and challenges and provide policy recommendations for improvement....

Background Extending Universal Health Coverage (UHC) requires identifying and addressing unmet healthcare need and its causes to improve access to essential health services. Unmet need is a useful monitoring indicator to verify if low incidence of catastrophic health spending is not a result of foregone services due to unmet needs. This study asses...

Abstract Primary Health Care (PHC) as presented in both the Alma Ata Declaration (1978) and the Astana Declaration(2018) with key principles of equity and community participation is critical for health improvements for all populations. However, the development of PHC policy for 40 years has continued to promote and implement approaches that, for t...

Cause-specific mortality estimates for 11 countries located in the WHO’s South East Asia Region (WHO SEAR) are generated periodically by the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) and the WHO Global Health Estimates (GHE) analyses. A comparison of GBD and GHE estimates for 2019 for 11 specific causes of epidemiological importance to South East Asia was und...

Civil Society organisations (CSOs) play a vital role in supporting HIV/AIDS prevention as they have an advantage over public providers in reaching out and maintaining relationships with key populations (KPs). We assessed the National Health Security Office (NHSO)’s contractual arrangement with CSOs for Reach-Recruit-Test-Treat-Retain (RRTTR) servic...

The rapid economic growth in low and middle-income countries provides the opportunity of translating political commitment into action for achieving Universal Health Coverage. However, this is not straightforward. High donor dependence in low income countries; the lack of fiscal space; the inadequacy of attention to primary health care and under-dev...

Although the benefits of breastfeeding are widely recognized, only 14% of mothers in Thailand exclusively breastfed their children during the first six months of their lives in 2019, which dropped from 23% in 2016. This study aimed to assess the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) up to six months, current breastfeeding patterns, and key de...

Thailand’s first wave of COVID-19 in March 2020 was triggered from boxing events and nightclubs in Bangkok, which spread to 68 provinces. The nation responded rapidly with strong public health and social measures on 26 March 2020. Contact tracing was performed by over 1000 surveillance and rapid response teams with support from 1.1 million village...

Background Global advocates for breastfeeding were evident since the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes (BMS Code) was adopted in 1981 and fostered by subsequent relevant World Health Assembly resolutions, using a framework that promotes, supports and protects breastfeeding. Global partners provided comprehensive support for...

Since January 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a far-reaching impact on global morbidity and mortality. The effects of varying degrees of implementation of public health and social measures between countries is evident in terms of widely differing disease burdens and levels of disruption to public health systems. Despi...

Background At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Thailand had almost depleted its critical care resources, particularly intensive care unit (ICU) beds and ventilators. This prompted the necessity to develop a national guideline for resource allocation. This paper describes the development process of a national guideline for critical resource allo...

Viroj Tangcharoensathien and colleagues apply the “triangle that moves the mountain” to analyse the co-production of evidence for health policy making in Thailand

Background In response to an increased burden from non-communicable diseases (NCDs), primary health care (PHC) is advocated as an effective platform to support NCD prevention and control. This study aims to assess Thailand’s PHC capacity in providing NCD services, identify enabling factors and challenges and provide policy recommendations for impro...

Participatory and responsive governance in universal health coverage (UHC) systems synergistically ensure the needs of citizens are protected and met. In Thailand, UHC constitutes of three public insurance schemes: Civil Servant Medical Benefit Scheme, Social Health Insurance and Universal Coverage Scheme. Each scheme is governed through individual...

Drawing on international experiences, Viroj Tangcharoensathien and colleagues argue that immediate extensive action to contain local transmission of new infectious diseases protects health systems from being overwhelmed

Background Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), recognised as a serious and growing threat to global health, is promoted by multiple drivers, including antibiotic use in the livestock sector. Thus, understanding factors influencing antibiotic use in livestock production is essential to the design and implementation of effective interventions to reduce A...

Walking and cycling are common physical activities if performed regularly in daily life will return health, environmental and economic benefits. This study aimed to 1) assess built environments that encourage walking and cycling in communities, 2) assess levels of physical activity and energy consumption, and 3) investigate the amount of carbon dio...

As COVID-19 ravages the world, many countries are faced with the grim reality of not having enough critical-care resources to go around. Knowing what could be in store, the Thai Ministry of Public Health called for the creation of an explicit protocol to determine how these resources are to be rationed in the situation of demand exceeding supply. T...

Thailand’s first national steps challenge has been implemented in 2020 with the goal to raise the level of physical activity nationwide by monitoring achievements through a smartphone application. This study examined the daily step counts of participants in the first national steps challenge. Six data points from 186,653 valid participants were ret...

We examine the potential and limitations of primary health care in contributing to the achievement of the health-related sustainable development goals (SDGs), and recommend policies to enable a functioning primary health-care system. Governments have recently reaffirmed their commitment to the SDGs through the 2018 Declaration of Astana, which rede...

Background: Legislative provisions in Thailand's National Health Security Act 2002 mandate annual public hearings for providers, beneficiaries and other stakeholders in order to improve the performance of the Universal Health Coverage Scheme (UCS). Objective: This study aims to explore the annual public hearing process, evaluate its effectivenes...

The availability of a functioning primary health-care system for populations in rural and underserved areas is crucial for reducing morbidity and mortality, and improving health indicators. A fully functioning primary health-care system is also a precondition to achieving universal health coverage (UHC). The health workforce is the backbone of pri...

Background: Thailand, an upper-middle income country, has demonstrated exemplary outcomes of Universal Health Coverage (UHC). The country achieved full population coverage and a high level of financial risk protection since 2002, through implementing three public health insurance schemes. UHC has two explicit goals of improved access to health ser...

Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), recognised as a serious and growing threat to global health, is driven by antibiotic use. Understanding factors influencing antibiotic use is essential to design and implement effective interventions to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use and AMR. This study aims to explore the practices and views of the ke...

Background: At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Thailand had almost depleted its critical care resources, particularly ICU beds and ventilators. This prompted the necessity to develop a national guideline for resource allocation. This paper describes the development process of a national guideline for critical resource allocation in Thailand du...

Background: Demographic changes in the pattern of disease burden, escalating health expenditures and inequitable access to healthcare are global challenges. Irrespective of their level of development, all countries need to reform their health systems to prepare for the future emerging health needs, in order to meet their commitments of health syst...

Background: Thailand, an upper-middle income country, has demonstrated exemplary outcomes of Universal Health Coverage (UHC). The country achieved full population coverage and a high level of financial risk protection since 2002, through implementing three public health insurance schemes. UHC has two explicit goals of improved access to health serv...

In response to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) commitment, eight selected countries in the South East Asia region have made a remarkable reduction in infant and child mortality, while a few have achieved an SDG 3.2 target of 25 and 12 for child and neonatal mortality rate, respectively, well before 2...

Although physicians in Thailand can carry out abortions legally, unsafe abortion rates remain high and have serious consequences for women’s health. Training programs for healthcare providers on the ‘Care of unplanned and adolescent pregnancies for the prevention of unsafe abortions’ have been implemented in Thailand with the aim of providing infor...

Sustaining universal health coverage requires robust active public participation in policy formation and governance. Thailand's universal coverage scheme was implemented nationwide in 2002, allowing Thailand to achieve full population coverage through three public health insurance schemes and to demonstrate improved health outcomes. Although Thaila...

Problem: The challenge of implementing contributory health insurance among populations in the informal sector was a barrier to achieving universal health coverage (UHC) in Thailand. Approach: UHC was a political manifesto of the 2001 election campaign. A contributory system was not a feasible option to honour the political commitment. Given Thai...

Background Rising global concern about antimicrobial resistance has drawn attention to the use of antibiotics in livestock. Understanding the current usage of antibiotics in these animals is essential for effective interventions on the optimisation of antibiotic use. However, to date few studies have been conducted in low- and middle-income countri...

Background Currently, various tools exist to evaluate knowledge and awareness of antibiotic use and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and are applied by various organizations. Previous systematic reviews have focused mainly on study findings such as levels of knowledge and AMR awareness. However, the survey procedures and data instruments used ought t...