Health Fund Teams Up With Community Hospitals to Reduce Disease

The Health Promotion Foundation is ready to work with community hospitals following the health minister's directive, with a shared goal of improving public health and reducing illness and treatment costs while increasing life expectancy.

At a community hospital academic conference, Health Minister Pattana Prom-Pat called on the Health Promotion Foundation to work together with community hospitals and primary care services. Dr Pongthep Wongwatcharapibul, manager of the Health Promotion Foundation, said the foundation is willing to collaborate with community hospitals and has held preliminary talks with Dr Pavit Vanitchananond, chairman of the Association of Community Hospital Directors of Thailand.

Both organizations aim to work together on health promotion, changing public behavior by reducing alcohol and tobacco consumption, increasing physical activity, and improving nutrition. These efforts are intended to reduce cases of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which are the leading cause of death in Thailand, accounting for 74 percent of all deaths.

"Community hospitals are a key mechanism for working together on health promotion and helping Thais have better health because they are close to local communities," Dr Pongthep said. "The foundation will provide full support using data-driven approaches in collaboration with the Universal Coverage Scheme, tailored to each area's context, analyzing expenses and reducing patient numbers. For example, we can identify which districts have the highest costs and cases of chronic kidney disease requiring dialysis, what problems each area faces, and provide targeted solutions to strengthen the system. The Health Promotion Foundation's budget represents only 0.5 percent of the country's total health budget, so reducing medical treatment costs requires upstream prevention—reducing disease rates—since the foundation's mission and budget must be directed toward health promotion."

Dr Pongthep added that current Thai health expenditure stands at 5 percent of GDP with an upward trend. According to global life expectancy data from worldometers.info for 2026, Thai people live an average of 77.1 years, but 6.9 of those years are spent in poor health. Medical costs in the two years before death average 119,318 baht per person, representing nearly half of GDP, which is a major factor in skewing the health expenditure structure toward treatment.

The collaboration with community hospitals aims to achieve behavioral change within one to two years, reducing new cases of NCDs and lowering medical treatment costs within three to five years.