Thailand, in collaboration with WHO, UNAIDS, and other UN agencies, has adopted guidelines to work on HIV/AIDS prevention and surveillance for funding and support. Thus, we can say that Thailand has been the recipient of global HIV/AIDS prevention. Thailand has been using biomedical interventions, such as promoting condoms, blood screening, treatment of STIs, etc; behavioral change interventions, such as voluntary counseling and testing, and school-based interventions; structural interventions such as the 100% condom use program; community-based approaches, such as the Buddhist and the Christian approach to HIV/AIDS prevention; and multi-sectoral approaches which integrate all of the above-mentioned approaches at different scales of operation.

As will be explained in Chapter 2, although Thailand has been passing many phases of HIV prevention, there has never been an effective assessment of the religious approaches to HIV prevention. This book explores and assesses the two most common approaches: the Buddhist and the Christian approaches which combine the biomedical approach and the behavior change intervention with religious beliefs. The Buddhist approach has been carried out in about 50 temples across the country. The Christian approach, with its headquarters in Chiang Mai, is covering operations in the northern part of Thailand.

My research project was designed to investigate perspectives on prevention concepts and methods as displayed at the grassroots level in Thailand, and to study what impedes or facilitates the prevention process.

I started this research in 2005 in Chiang Rai, Thailand. The research aimed at studying the globalization-localization process of HIV/AIDS prevention notions from the Western or the developed world down to the village level. The ABC (Abstinence or delay sexual debut, Be faithful or reduce the number of partners, and Condom use where one is unwilling or unable to practice A or B) strategy and the safer sex and dialogue approaches, unofficially called CNN (Condom, Negotiation and sterile Needles) to prevent HIV/AIDS were studied. I interviewed 160 Thai Buddhist and 102 Protestant villagers using questionnaires with closed and open-ended questions administered in a face-to-face situation. The Buddhist respondents, who came from Tonnam6 village in Tonpa sub-district, were systematic randomly selected from the whole village of 1,274 people. The Protestant respondents, who came from Lamthan village in Lamnao sub-district, were all the villagers living in the village at the time of research. In addition, I conducted 29 in-depth interviews with key informants in both villages. The data collection took place from 1 September 2005 to 10 January 2006, and during a two-week follow-up visit in April 2007. I was also given access to the library of the Department of Disease Control at the Ministry of Public Health in Nonthaburi, and interviewed the Chair of the National AIDS Committee in Bangkok. Some interviews were semi-structured, some unstructured.

The distribution of global HIV/AIDS prevention policies via the national level to the local village level are summarized in the flow chart shown on Table 2.