• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.533-544
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• 2017

In this study, the fauna of freshwater fish were investigated from March until October of 2016 in 24 independent streams in the Jeonnam and Jeonbuk provinces, which were flowing into the Yellow Sea. The health of the aquatic ecosystem in those streams was assessed through the biological and abiological character index (BAc index). During the surveyed period, a total of 4,127 individuals were collected; they belonged to 59 species of 44 genera in 18 families. The most dominant species identified was Zacco platypus, and 12 species were endemic species of Korea, including Rhodeus uyekii. The BAc index indicated a statistically significant correlation (p<0.01 or 0.05). The stage distribution of the aquatic ecosystem health assessment showed the highest rating of 41.7% at the "Fair" stage. The "Good" and "Poor" stages accounted for 20.8% while the "Excellent" stage took up 16.7%. It has been confirmed that the aquatic ecosystem health of independent streams is influenced more by the abiological character index as a consequence of geographical characteristics and artificial/natural limiting factors, than by the biological character index.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.15-28
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• 2010

Because deterioration of air quality and urban heat island directly harm health of citizens, Health Impact Assessment (HIA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for urban development projects needs to conduct analysis of their impacts objectively. This study aims to review appropriate methods for assessment of air quality used at each stage of urban development and to investigate prediction and assessment methods of urban heat island. In addition, by evaluating impacts of climate change following supposed urban construction performed in the central area of Korea on public health, it examines usefulness of HIA for urban construction. When urban heat island prediction and HIA method suggested in this study are applied to an imaginary city, they predict urban heat island properly and the impacts of climate changes on public health inside the city could be determined clearly by calculating life-climate index and bio-climate index related with thermal environment from the model.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.267-273
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• 2009

Objectives : To compare the performance of three comorbidity measurements (Charlson comorbidity index, Elixhauser s comorbidity and comorbidity selection) with the effect of different comorbidity lookback periods when predicting in-hospital mortality for patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention. Methods : This was a retrospective study on patients aged 40 years and older who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention. To distinguish comorbidity from complications, the records of diagnosis were drawn from the National Health Insurance Database excluding diagnosis that admitted to the hospital. C-statistic values were used as measures for in comparing the predictability of comorbidity measures with lookback period, and a bootstrapping procedure with 1,000 replications was done to determine approximate 95% confidence interval. Results : Of the 61,815 patients included in this study, the mean age was 63.3 years (standard deviation: ${\pm}$10.2) and 64.8% of the population was male. Among them, 1,598 2.6%) had died in hospital. While the predictive ability of the Elixhauser's comorbidity and comorbidity selection was better than that of the Charlson comorbidity index, there was no significant difference among the three comorbidity measurements. Although the prevalence of comorbidity increased in 3 years of lookback periods, there was no significant improvement compared to 1 year of a lookback period. Conclusions : In a health outcome study for patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention using National Health Insurance Database, the Charlson comorbidity index was easy to apply without significant difference in predictability compared to the other methods. The one year of observation period was adequate to adjust the comorbidity. Further work to select adequate comorbidity measurements and lookback periods on other diseases and procedures are needed.

• Water Engineering Research
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.169-178
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• 2005

Comprehensive assessment of ecological riparian zone is to analyze and evaluate the status of riparian zone ecosystem. The existing problem of the ecosystem can be found through the assessment. The AHP-FUZZY method used in the assessment is based on the hierarchy model of index, grade model of object, and attribution degree of index. Accordingly, the four models have been discussed and presented from the aspect of the stability, landscape, eco-health and eco-safety of riparian zone.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.527-540
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• 2011

Some patients tend to visit tertiary hospitals instead of non-tertiary hospitals for minor illnesses, which is a chronic problem within the Korean health care delivery system. In order to reduce the number of patients with minor severity diseases unnecessarily utilizing the tertiary medical services in Korea, the Ministry of Health and Welfare raised the outpatient co-insurance rate for the tertiary hospitals in July, 2009. Another increase in the prescription drug co-insurance rate by the general and tertiary hospitals is scheduled to take place in the second half of 2011. An increase in copayments may discourage the utilization rate of medical services among the underprivileged or patients who require complicated procedures. This study aims to analyze the diabetic patients' utilization rates of tertiary hospitals according to the Comorbidity score. Diabetic patients' data was gathered from the Health Insurance Claims Records in the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service between 2007-2009. Comorbidity scores are measured by the Charlson Comorbidity Index and the Elixhauser Index. Chi-square and logistic regressions were performed to compare the utilization rates of both insulin-dependents (n=94,026) and non-insulin-dependents (n=1,424,736) in tertiary hospitals. The higher Comorbidity outcomes in the insulin-dependent diabetic patients who didn't visit tertiary hospitals compared to those who did, was expected. However, after adjusting the gender, age, location, first visits and complications, the groups that scored >=1 on the comorbidity scale utilized the tertiary hospitals more than the O score group. Non-insulin-diabetic patients with higher Comorbidity scores visited tertiary hospitals more than patients who received lower grades. This study found that patients suffering from severe diabetes tend to frequently visit the tertiary hospitals in Korea. This result implied that it is important for Korea to improve the quality of its primary health care as well as to consider a co-insurance rate increase.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.33-42
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• 2015

Objectives: This study was conducted to investigate the correlation between the health-related quality of life assessment according to socio-demographic characteristics, health behavior, and BMI for Gyeonggi-do community population. Methods: The 2012 Community Health Survey data was used. The data were collected by using a cross-sectional study with face-to-face interview. The variables of smoking, AUDIT, exercise, BMI, and Euroqol EQ-5D instrument were selected for analyses. The Difference on the EQ-5D index among groups were tested with Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis test. Results: The EQ-5D index for Gyeonggi-do community was 0.951(${\pm}0.104$). The index were significantly different by sex, age, marital status, education level, and occupation. The health-related quality of life showed lower EQ-5D index in women than men, older than young, and less educated. The index were significantly different by health behavior (smoking, drinking, moderate physical activity and exercise) for both men and women). For BMIs, the index was lower to under-weighted male and over-weighted female. Conclusions: The findings suggest that the future intervention of health promotion programs should be carefully designed and tailored by health behavior and obese groups.

• KIISE Transactions on Computing Practices
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.225-234
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• 2016

The emergence of diverse medical Internet of Things (IoT) devices has facilitated the collection and analysis of medical contexts to assess health conditions. However, the complexity of IoT-based systems for health assessment is quiet high and it requires high development cost, since the designs of the systems highly depend on the heath aspects to be evaluated. In this paper, we propose a design of the platform that provides generic functionalities to various health evaluation applications. We first define a metric for computing a health index, which is a generic health assessment model. And, based on the proposed generic health index, we propose a design of the platform to evaluate diverse aspects of the health including its hardware architecture, software architecture and database design. We describe the result of developing Rainbow Toilet System based on the proposed platform, and assess the practical applicability.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.335-346
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• 2020

Background: Nursing service is a nonroutine work with an excessive physical load and diverse tasks. This study derived representative common tasks based on the frequently occurring tasks with a high physical load in the nursing workers' daily work and developed indicators to evaluate the work risk by reflecting the characteristics of nonroutine work. Methods: Common tasks were classified through the following stages: literature review, first focus group interview (FGI) with experts, first classification of common tasks, second FGI with hospital health managers, a survey of nursing service workers, and the final classification of common tasks for each task type. To develop an objective risk index for physical load assessment, we investigated the frequency and duration of the derived common tasks via survey. Results: Nursing common tasks were categorized into six task types and 56 subtasks. To evaluate the risks of various tasks in nonroutine works, three frequencies and three working time levels were defined by examining the task frequency and working hours. Exposure time was defined to reflect the characteristics of a nonroutine job. The final risk assessment was the product of the exposure time level and job intensity level. From this, four risk action levels were derived. Conclusion: This study has the advantage of solving the problem of focusing on some tasks in evaluating the physical load. It was meaningful in that a new risk assessment index based on exposure time was proposed based on the development of an evaluation scale for frequency and time by reflecting the characteristics of nonroutine work.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Environmental Biology Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.69-69
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• 2002

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.52-60
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• 2016

As Korea is expected to become super high aged society in 2026, nutrition is important elements of health in the elderly and affects their life. In epidemiological surveys, anthropometric and biochemical measurements represent important components of nutritional assessment in elderly. In the present study, we investigated anthropometric index, biochemical markers, and nutrient intake for elderly aged over 85 by using data on 71 elderly (24 men, 47 women) over 85 years which was obtained from Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2009. According to BMI values, the prevalence of underweight and obesity was 9.7% and 34.5% in men, and 7.9% and 26.4% in women. The prevalence of sarcopenia was 70.7% in men and 25.0% in women. However, plasma biochemical data are normal range in the older population. In nutrients intake, daily Intake of energy, protein, dietary fiber, water, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, calcium, and potassium was inadequate considering the Dietary Reference Intakes for Koreans(KDRIs). In conclusion, elderly need to be educated nutrition and their health dietary life to prevent malnutrition, and standard of nutrition intake should be rearranged in elderly aged 85 over considering their antrhopometric index.