Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major health problem among women worldwide. In Thailand, risk factors of CVD in rural Thai women have not yet been examined. The purpose of this predictive correlational study was to examine risk factors of CVD in rural Thai women. Non-modifiable risk factors, modifiable risk factors (physiological, behavioral, and psychological risk factors), contextual risk factors, as well as, coping were conceptualized as major variables in this study.The sample consisted of 149 rural Thai women who had been diagnosed with CVD and resided in rural northern Thailand. A set of questionnaires and physiological measures were used to obtain data. The Chi-square test and the Pearson correlation technique, as well as the Multiple regression were used for data analysis.The results revealed that age, hypertension, cigarette smoking, stress, depression, and poverty had positive relationships with the severity of CVD. BMI, physical activity, education level, and family income were inversely related to the severity of CVD. However, total cholesterol, diabetes mellitus, menopause status, alcohol consumption, distance to hospital, transportation to health care, and coping had no relationship to the severity of CVD. A few of the physiological and behavioral risk factors were significant predictors of the severity of CVD in rural Thai women. These included high blood pressure, cigarette smoking, and physical inactivity. Notably, psychological stress and the contextual risk factors of income and poverty were also significant predictors of the severity of CVD in these women. Moreover, there were the significant moderator effects in predicting to the severity of CVD: total serum cholesterol and family income, diabetes and distance to a hospital, BMI and transportation, menopause and income, cigarette smoking and transportation, and depression and poverty.In conclusion, the findings from this study suggested that few of traditional risk factors of CVD were significant risk factors for CVD. Noteworthy findings demonstrated that psychological stress and contextual risk factors played an important role in contributing to CVD in rural Thai women. It is suggested that specific and effective interventions are needed for these women in order to reduce their morbidity and mortality rates of CVD.

Abstract This study examines people-centred Thai NGOs trying to help peasants empower themselves in order to compete better in conflicts over land, water, forest, and capital, during the 1970s to 1990s. The study investigates how the NGOs contested asymmetric power relations among government officials, private entrepreneurs and ordinary people while helping raise the people’s confidence in their own power to negotiate their demands with other actors.¶ The thesis argues that the NGOs are able to play an interventionist role when a number of key factors coexist. First, the NGOs are able to understand local situations, which contain asymmetric power relations between different actors, in relation to current changes in the wider context of the Thai political economy and seize the time to take action. Secondly, the NGOs are able to articulate a social meaning beyond the dominating rhetoric of the ‘state’ and the ‘capitalists’ which encourages the people’s participation in collective activities. Thirdly, while dealing with one problem in social relations and negotiation with local environment, the NGOs are able to recognise new problems as they arise and rapidly identify a new political space for the actors to renegotiate their conflicting interests and demands. Fourthly, the NGOs are able to recreate new meanings, new actors and reform their organisations and networks to deal with new situations. Finally, the NGOs are able to effectively use three pillars of their movement, namely individuals, organisations and networks to deal with everyday politics and collective protest.¶ The case studies in three villages in Northern Thailand reveal that the NGOs were able to play an interventionist role in specific situations through their alternative development strategies somewhat influenced by structural Marxism. The thesis recommends that the NGO interventionist role be continued so as to overcome tensions within the NGO community, for instance, between the NGOs working at the grass-roots level and the NGOs working at regional and national levels (including NGO funding agencies); local everyday conflicts; and the bipolar views of a society among the NGOs expressed in dichotomous thinking between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’, ‘community’ and ‘state’, conflict and order, actor and system.¶ The fragmentation of NGO social and environmental movements showed that there is no single formula or easy solution to the problems. If the NGOs want to continue their interventionist role to help empower ordinary people and help them gain access to productive resources, they must move beyond their bipolar views of a society to discover the middle ground to search for new meanings, new actors, new issues and to create again and again counter-hegemony movements. This could be done by having abstract development theories assessed and enriched by concrete development practices and vice versa. Both theorists and practitioners need to use their own imagination to invent and reinvent what and how best to continue.