Fourth, the UCS focus on preventive and health promotion services and effective
primary care gatekeeping can help to avoid the high costs of secondary and
tertiary care. The current emphasis on clinical preventive and health promotion
services (immunization, antenatal care, family planning, cervical cancer screening,
screening for diabetes and hypertension, and so forth) is important, but
these interventions do not address lifestyle determinants of ill health such as use
of tobacco and alcohol, unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity. The UCS
needs to allocate additional resources to address these factors more effectively,
especially given the rapidly ageing population of Thailand and the consequent
growth in noncommunicable diseases (Figure 18). In 2010 a National Health
Assembly resolution endorsed a national policy to focus long-term care more on
community and household-based services with an effective interface with clinical
services, instead of on institutional care.