Survey of Satisfaction and usefulness of DDC WATCH

Abstract

Background: In June 2014, the Bureau of Epidemiology under the Department of Disease Control, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand, has established the DDC watch using infographics to publish monthly disease and health events of major public health concern. A survey on satisfaction and usefulness of DDC Watch was carried out for constant improvement and quality assurance.
Methods: A cross–section study was performed in the surveillance and rapid response team (SRRT) network in all provinces from 1 October 2015 to 30 June 2016. A survey questionnaire along with the DDC WATCH were delivered by the post office to stakeholders and distributed to the participants in the national SRRT meeting.
Results: Out of 700 copies, 362 (51.71%) had responded the survey. About 54.4% were males. Most of the respondents aged 36–45 years old (32.1%) and educated for a bachelor degree (57.2%). Majority (86.5%) were health technical officers or public health officers. About 45.3% were working in provincial health offices and 46.1% had more than 10 years of working experiences. Most (81.5%) of them had seen the DDC watch before and 75.4% had utilized it. About 37.9% received the DDC Watch during training or meeting, and 73.5% used the DDC Watch to track disease information. Satisfaction was found to be the highest in all topics, including contents and presentation design.
Conclusions: Regarding to the usefulness, the average satisfaction resulted as 3.1–3.2 out of total 4 scores since the contents in the DDC watch relate to diseases under the policy and disease or health events under the planning of the Department of Disease Control, and is mainly used for seasonal disease outbreak warning. Recommendations included quality assessment by internal and external experts, and increasing visibility of the DDC Watch to other networks under the Department.