Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyze the community participation in regional health planning by using the operational definition of participation channels, and to find out the significant variables of community participation channel which are highly related to the scores of regional health plan. The channels we adopted for the study are recommended in the guidebook for regional health planning. They are performing residents' helath survey, submitting written agreement of publics, holding public hearings, putting publicnotice, conducting community health committee meeting, submitting opinion of chambers and Mayors, and operating task-force for planning. We analyzed the selected data of 8 community participation channels, which were submitted by 141 rural health centers for the pursuit of governmental subsidy in 1997. The major findings of this study are as follows; 1. In the process of regional health planning, 88.7% of rural community health centers have performed the residents' health survey, 14.9% submitted written agreement of publics, 11.3% held public hearings, 39.0% put public notice, 46.8% conducting community health committee meeting, 48.9% submitted opinion of chambers, 61.7% submitted opinion of Mayors and 25.5% operated task-force for planning. The result shows that most of community participation channels have been utilized at very low rates, except the residents' health survey. 2. We have analyzed the impact of these community participation channels on the regional health plan scores. In the multiple regression model, we set the regional health plan score as the dependent variable., and the use of participation channels as the idependent variables(1 if the channels are used, 0 otherwise). Finally, the regression analyses show that two channel variables, opinion of chambers and public notice, were the significant positive channel variables on the score of community health plan.