Promoting Family Health, Happiness, and Harmony Through a Community-based "Learning Family" Campaign

Overview

According to the Social Welfare Department statistics, Kwun Tong has been ranked as the highest for the reported cases of elderly abuse (12.3%), the second and fourth highest for the reported cases of battered spouse (9.2%) and child abuse (7.9%) respectively. To strengthen family well-being in the Kwun Tong community, the investigators adopt a community-based participatory (CBP) approach and implement a community-based "Learning Family" campaign in Kwun Tong district with the investigators collaborator, the Christian Family Service Centre (CFSC). The campaign aims to promote family health, happiness, and harmony (3Hs) through cultivating cooperative and self-regulated family learning culture in Kwun Tong district.

Family well-being, which has been conceptualized as "family-life satisfaction", "sense of well-being" and "family function", is associated with outcomes such as hypertension, self-rated health, depression, and self-esteem in family members. Interpersonal harmony in the family is believed to be crucial for the Chinese who see it as contributing not only to each individual member's welfare but also to a well-organized and peaceful world. According to traditional Confucius ideals, family harmony is the basis for an individual's happiness. The investigators qualitative studies in Hong Kong have also found that family health, happiness and harmony (3Hs) are three major themes of family well-being. Family health includes physical and mental health of family members, which is strongly related to psychological capital and family unity. Family happiness can be enhanced by spending time with family members and building connection with friends and relatives. Family harmony means absence of conflicts and effective communication with family members. Forbearance and spending time with family are important in forming a harmonious family. Learning Families Project was initiated based on the social ecological model. Social ecological model is a framework to examine the dynamic interrelations among various personal and environmental factors. This model emphasizes people's behaviors are affected by factors of different levels including intra-personal, inter-personal, community and societal factors. These programs promoted the concepts of Learning Family and family 3Hs to the participants (intra-personal level). The concepts of Learning Family indicated that family relationship could be improved when family members learnt something together. These programs also provided a platform for family members to learn together and communicate with each other (inter-personal level), as well as for residents to interact in these community activities (community level).