An asset-based intervention with Tuberculosis groups in rural Indonesia villages: overview and lessons learned

This paper describes an eight-month community-based participatory research project to introduce and evaluate the implementation of an asset-based approach to Tuberculosis (TB) leadership groups in three villages in Flores Island, Indonesia. An asset-based intervention that emphasized discovering, mobilizing, and strengthening the capacities of local communities was conducted. Asset-mapping workshops aimed to shift the TB leadership groups’ capacity to work differently by focusing on their strengths rather than their problems or needs, to enable them to manage their own TB program. Monthly visits, home visits, informal discussions, and group discussions with TB groups were carried out to provide support to groups or leaders and to monitor and evaluate the project. The intervention successfully generated significant changes in the TB groups’ view of outsiders and their relationship with the villagers, built dialogue between the group members, strengthened local initiatives that could reduce the rates of TB and encourage early diagnosis and therefore treatment, and encouraged community engagement. The approach enabled TB leadership groups to be more confident and capable in managing a local TB program that was formulated by themselves for themselves to achieve their own goals. The approach and techniques demonstrated in this study may represent an effective method and deliver outcomes that could be generalizable to similar settings and other health issues.