Authors: Donna Shelley, Linh Nguyen, Hieu Pham, Nancy VanDevanter and Nam Nguyen
According to the 2010 Global Tobacco Survey, 47.4% of men in Vietnam are current smokers, a smoking prevalence that is the second highest among South East Asian countries (SEAC). If current smoking rates are not addressed it is estimated that in 10 years tobacco use will be responsible for about 25% of adult male deaths in Vietnam. Promoting cessation is the key to reversing current global trends in tobacco-related mortality over the next few decades.
Barriers to implementing cessation services in public health systems in LMICs include inadequate training of health care providers and lack of systems and staffing to support these services. In addition, although a grow- ing literature demonstrates the effectiveness of strategies to increase the delivery of smoking cessation treatment in primary care, these studies have been conducted almost exclusively in high-income countries.
In Vietnam, as in other LMICs, there are infrastructure elements, including a ro- bust public health delivery system with an extensive net- work of community health workers (CHWs) (referred to as village health workers in Vietnam) that could be leveraged to enhance tobacco use treatment. In LMICs, CHWs build bridges between the formal health system and communities increasing access to health services. Therefore, it is surprising that in LMICs there are no studies evaluating the role of CHWs and/or village health workers as a referral resource for increasing access to evidence-based smoking cessation services, and we are aware of only one study in the U.S.
Because in Vietnam this workforce is referred to as village health workers (VHWs) we will use that term in this article. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes and beliefs among VHWs towards expanding their role to include delivering smoking cessation interventions and potential barriers and facilitator associated with implementing a VHW-delivered cessation intervention.
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Resource Topic: CHW Role, Community Health Workers/Volunteers, Community Involvement, Human Resources Management/Workforce Development, Models, Referral
Resource Type: Research
Year: 2014
Region: Asia
Country: Vietnam
Publisher May Restrict Access: No