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Background: The population structure in Thailand has changed to an elderly society. The promotion of quality of life for the urban elderly is essential in order to prepare them to become sustainable community members. Objective: This study aimed at evaluating the effects related to the community-potential factors on the quality of life of urban elderly and developing the guidelines for the capacity of the community to enhance the quality of life of urban elderly. Methods: A mixed-method approach was utilized in two steps. In the first step, quantitative data were collected from 56 elderly people and their caregivers living in an urban area. This data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and stepwise multiple regression. In the second step, the qualitative data were also gathered with a semi-structured interview and community surveys from 36 key informants consisting of community leaders, elderly people, partner agencies, community representative groups, public-sector agencies, educational institutions, and people from the civil-society sector to form a focused group in order to analyze their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). Content analysis was carried out to analyze this data. Results: The levels of quality of life among the elderly living in the Chan-Kasem community were high. The community potential factors influencing the quality of life of the urban elderly were also high. Results of regression analysis showed that one variable factor affected the quality of life in the elderly (12.6%). Conclusion: Three guideline themes for determining the capacity of the community to enhance the quality of life of the urban elderly were found: 1) building a community network and a community learning process to generate a volunteer group in order to incorporate and solve the elderly’s problems, 2) increasing the capacity and promoting the livelihoods of the elderly, and 3) constructing elderly awareness as a valuable human resource of the community.

Background: The population structure in Thailand has changed to an elderly society. The promotion of quality of life for the urban elderly is essential in order to prepare them to become sustainable community members. Objective: This study aimed at evaluating the effects related to the community-potential factors on the quality of life of urban elderly and developing the guidelines for the capacity of the community to enhance the quality of life of urban elderly. Methods: A mixed-method approach was utilized in two steps. In the first step, quantitative data were collected from 56 elderly people and their caregivers living in an urban area. This data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and stepwise multiple regression. In the second step, the qualitative data were also gathered with a semi-structured interview and community surveys from 36 key informants consisting of community leaders, elderly people, partner agencies, community representative groups, public-sector agencies, educational institutions, and people from the civil-society sector to form a focused group in order to analyze their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). Content analysis was carried out to analyze this data. Results: The levels of quality of life among the elderly living in the Chan-Kasem community were high. The community potential factors influencing the quality of life of the urban elderly were also high. Results of regression analysis showed that one variable factor affected the quality of life in the elderly (12.6%). Conclusion: Three guideline themes for determining the capacity of the community to enhance the quality of life of the urban elderly were found: 1) building a community network and a community learning process to generate a volunteer group in order to incorporate and solve the elderly’s problems, 2) increasing the capacity and promoting the livelihoods of the elderly, and 3) constructing elderly awareness as a valuable human resource of the community.

Purpose When reviewing Community Health Development, it is necessary to understand the community context, including community health and details of medical pluralism (MP). The purpose of this paper is to correlate and predict between community health and related factors and delineate phenomenon of MP in Thammasen, Ratchaburi province, Thailand. Design/methodology/approach A mixed-methods sequential explanatory design was applied in this research. The quantitative survey was conducted by using an interview questionnaire. The 400 respondents were selected by simple random sampling from 11 villages. For the qualitative study, in-depth interviews were conducted with 37 key informants from selected health professionals, folk healers and local leaders. Findings The respondents were 56.5 percent female with a mean age of 53.8 years. The factors relating to community health included: health care behaviors, perceived health status, attitudes toward health care and access to health services. Considering the four predictive variables as a group revealed a 26.2 percent variation in community health. The phenomenon of MP was covered by the following three main aspects: self-health care (SHC)—healthy people pay attention to self-care and used herbal remedies to reduce early symptoms; folk medicine (FM)—some folk healers provide holistic healing, use herbal remedies and transfer knowledge to people who are interested and professional medicine (PM)—some health professionals adopt the concept of integrated medicines such as recommending that patients practice SHC and promote the use of Thai traditional medicine (TTM) and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Originality/value Health professionals, folk healers and local leaders should provide effective action domains that focus on the following four factors of community health: effective health care behavior, concern for health status, positive attitudes toward health care and accessibility to health services. Regarding MP, integrated medical and health care models should be developed to link SHC, FM and PM (including TTM/CAM).