• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.447-453
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• 2007

Although the New National Health Promotion Plan 2010 target to reduce health inequalities, whether the program will be effective for reducing the health inequalities in Korea remains quite unclear. More and more developed countries have been started to concentrate on comprehensive policies for reducing health inequalities. The health policies of the UK, Netherlands, and Sweden are the most wellknown. I propose that a comprehensive blueprint for tackling health inequalities in Korea should be made and that it must contain five domains: a target, structure and process, life-course approach, area-based approach, and reorganization of health care resources. The target should be based on determinants of health and more attention should be paid to socioeconmic factors. The structure and process require changes from the national health care policy based on medical services to the national health policy that involves the establishment of a Social Deputy?Prime Minister and the strengthening multidisciplinary action. A life-course approach especially focused on the early childhood years. Area-based approach such as the establishment of healthy communities, healthy schools, or healthy work-places which are focused on deprived areas or places is also required. Finally, health care resources should be a greater investment on public resources and strengthening primary care to reduce health inequalities. The policy or intervention studies for tackling health inequalities should be implemented much more in Korea. In addition, it is essential to have political will to encoruage policy action.

• Journal of muscle and joint health
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.100-135
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• 1999

Typical symptoms of rheumatic disease affect overall daily living and cause severe stress. Individuals afflicted with rheumatic disease have many illness-related stresses. Pain was the predominantly perceived stress followed by limitation in mobility, difficulties in carrying out activities of daily living. helplessness, dependency on others, threat to self-esteem, interference in social activity, interference in family relationships. difficulties performing at work, and discomfort of the treatment. Patients with chronic arthritis are subjected to long periods of continuous stress, which may require the management by the health care provider. In these cases, the purpose of the nursing is helping to promote health through supporting patient's coping. Therefore, for the nursing intervention to be effective, it is critical to build a theoretical framework that describes stress-coping for chronic arthritis. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation is to present a theoretical framework which describes the stress-coping processes and to empirically test pathos of this framework for the people with chronic arthritis. The foundation upon which this framework is built in the Erickson, Tomlin, and Swain(1983) theory of Modeling and role-Modeling. The subjects were 275 patients with rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis who visited the outpatient clinic. A hypothetical model of stress-coping was tested by covariance structure analysis with PC-LISREL 8.12 program. As a result, the overall fit was good(Chi-square=94.49, P=0.00, RMR=0.067, GFI=0.95, AGFI=0.91, NNFI=0.93, NFI=0.91) for the hypothetical model. The results of hypothesis testing were as follows : Basic need satisfaction had a statistically significant influence on illness-related experience, emotional stress and coping resources. Internal health locus of control had a statistically significant influence on coping resources. However, independent variables(basic need satisfaction, internal health locus of control, illness-related experience, emotional stress and coping resource) did not have significantly influence on coping. And then, the hypothetical model was modified by considering both the theoretical implication and statistical significance of the parameter estimates. The revised model had a better fit to the data(Chi-square=83.11(P=0.00), RMR=0.061, GFI=0.96, AGFI=0.92, NNFI=0.95, NFI=0.92). Hypothesis emerged from the revised model was tested. The results of hypothesis testing were as follows : Basic need satisfaction had a statistically significant influence on illness-related experience, emotional stress and coping resources. Internal health locus of control had a statistically significant influence on illness-related experience and coping resources. Internal health locus of control, illness-related experience, emotional stress and coping resources had a significantly influence on coping. According to the results of this dissertation, basic need satisfaction and internal health locus of control play a central role in appraisal of illness-related experience and coping resources. And illness related-experience, emotional stress, and coping resources affect on coping activities. In summary, nursing interventions to enhance basic need satisfaction and internal health locus of control will decrease illness related experience and emotional stress and increase coping resources. Increased coping resources will prompt coping activities.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.18-48
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• 2004

Health policies in many countries have come under critical scrutiny in recent years. This is because of increasing national health expenditures. Also many persons in health sector have been the perception that resources allocated to health services are not always deployed in an optimal fashion. And they believe that the scope of resources in health services is limited, there is need to search for ways of using existing resources more efficiently. A further concern has been the desire to ensure access to healthcare of various groups on an equitable basis. In some European countries this has been linked to a wish to enhance patient choice and to make service providers more responsive to consumers, while Korea integrated health insurance funds into single fund in 2000. Many European countries are under considerable pressure to review and restructure their health care systems. There are several reasons of pressure to reform. There are demographic changes, pattern of disease change, advances in medical sciences will also give rise to new demands within the health services, public expectations of health services are rising as those who use services demand higher standards of care. These circumstances require the change of health care delivery system based on hierarchical regionalism, which was basis of health care delivery since 1920s. Korea is also under similarly pressure to restructure our own health care systems. We will have good learning from OECD experiences. In this paper we reviewed and compared among OECD countries' various experiences.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.213-219
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• 2022

Objective: The Job Demand & Resources model suggests work characteristics are related to mental well-being and work engagement. Previous work describes the development of a combined construct 'engaged well-being at work' (EWB). To what extent changes in measures of this construct are responsive to changes in job demands and resources or associated with changes in job-related attitudes has not been established. Methods: Longitudinal employee-level data from three waves (German Linked Personnel Panel) were used. Logistic and linear fixed effects regression analyses explored longitudinal associations between changes in EWB for participants over a three-year period with changes in job demands and resources and job-related attitudes (job commitment, satisfaction, and turnover intentions). Results: While job resources were associated with increased odds for a change into a healthier and/or more engaged category of EWB, job demands reduced them. Job resources were more strongly related to higher EWB (OR_range = 1.22 - 1.61) than job demands (OR_range = 0.79 - 0.96). Especially psychological job demands showed negative associations with improved EWB (OR = 0.79). A change from the least desirable category 'disengaged strain' to any other category of EWB was associated with greater odds by up to 20.6 % for increased commitment and job satisfaction and lower odds for turnover intentions. Discussion: Improving work characteristics, especially job resources, could increase employees' EWB, emphasizing the importance of job characteristics for a healthy workplace. Because EWB seems to be associated with job attitudes, an improvement of this indicator would be relevant for employees and employers.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.387-396
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• 2020

Objectives: The lack of advance planning in a public health emergency can lead to wasted resources and inadvertent loss of lives. This study is aimed at forecasting the needs for healthcare resources following the expansion of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in the Republic of Kazakhstan, focusing on hospital beds, equipment, and the professional workforce in light of the developing epidemiological situation and the data on resources currently available. Methods: We constructed a forecast model of the epidemiological scenario via the classic susceptible-exposed-infected-removed (SEIR) approach. The World Health Organization's COVID-19 Essential Supplies Forecasting Tool was used to evaluate the healthcare resources needed for the next 12 weeks. Results: Over the forecast period, there will be 104 713.7 hospital admissions due to severe disease and 34 904.5 hospital admissions due to critical disease. This will require 47 247.7 beds for severe disease and 1929.9 beds for critical disease at the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak. There will also be high needs for all categories of healthcare workers and for both diagnostic and treatment equipment. Thus, Republic of Kazakhstan faces the need for a rapid increase in available healthcare resources and/or for finding ways to redistribute resources effectively. Conclusions: Republic of Kazakhstan will be able to reduce the rates of infections and deaths among its population by developing and following a consistent strategy targeting COVID-19 in a number of inter-related directions.

• Food Science of Animal Resources
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.523-532
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• 2009

Changing health awareness has had an important effect on the functional food industry and is creating greater market opportunities. Unfortunately, there is no statement on functional dairy products in the Processing of Livestock Products Act. As a result, there is confusion in the market and legal difficulties with regard to the advertising of functional dairy products. This study was carried out to improve the current standardization of functional dairy products by comparing the domestic Health/Functional Food Act with the Japanese Health Promotion Law, and by investigating scientific data and articles from various literature and the Internet. In Japan, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) officially presented the Food with Health Claims (FHC) system that consists of Food with Nutrient Function Claims (FNFC), and innovated Food for Specified Health Uses (FOSHU). In 2005, the FOSHU system was changed to include several new subsystems: Current, Standardized, Reduction of disease risk, and Qualified FOSHU. Finally, to manufacture FOSHU, scientific evidence pertaining to such products must be examined by MHLW. Since FNFC was allowed, only 12 vitamins, ${\beta}-carotene$, and five minerals were approved, though without scientific evidence of efficacy. The Korean Health/Functional Food Act requires that health/functional foods (HFFs) be marketed in measured doses. There are two types of HFFs: generic and product-specific. There are 67 ingredients listed in the act for generic HFFs, and if an HFF has a new active ingredient, it is considered a product-specific HFF. Product-specific HFFs must be approved by the Korean Food and Drug Administration (KFDA). With the present standards, it is impossible to label and advertise functional dairy products with health/functional claims. Government agencies must cooperate to solve this problem, and standardization should be carried out by considering existing health/functional products and claims/indications from other countries.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.44-54
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• 1986

This study was aimed at investigating the health seeking behaviors of patients; For the purpose of analyzing the research theme we classified the study into two phase. First, the types of patients' health seeking behavior were categorized into a scheme according to what medical care resources were utilized in patients' coping process. Second, from patients' first visits to third visits to medical resources, we analyzed variations of factors which noted as crucial elements in constituting the patients' sickness career. To grasp the generalized characteristics from complicated empirical data, we limited the scope of our analysis to third stage of health seeking. A total of 121 persons who had beer suffering from chronic diseases more than 3 months was sampled among the residents of Banwol-Eup, the target Area of Korea University Health Project. The findings are as follows ; 1) In the course of visiting medical care resources, 34 different types of health seeking Behavior were found. From this result we inferred the idea that patients in Banwol-Eup had not any stable norms to cope with their pains. Clinics, hospital, pharmacy, Herb-doctors', folkways (self-treatment) were accessed by patients in orders. But more than half of patients who had utilized clinics or hospitals from their first to third visits, changed medical care resources to others, for example herb doctors or folkways, which had fundamentally different treatment models. Upon these two facts, the diversified types and capricious patterns in the health seeking behavior of Banwol patients, we observed a typical Shopping-Around phenomenon. 2) Factors which influenced patients' to their sickness career were changed along the courses of health seeking, from first to third visits as follows ; $\cdot$ Perceived seriousness of diseases were tended to decrease. $\cdot$ Professional medical personnel tended to be influencial in the patients' sickness career, (5.0%, 25.0% and 65.7%). The influence of the primary interaction groups such as parents, friends, neighbours, tended to decrease ; (90.9%, 71.2% and 30.0%). $\cdot$ The subjective reasons why to choose such a medical care resource were related to economic affordability and disease-itself as main motives. Credibility of health resources tended to increase 14.9%, 24.0% and 31.4 sequently. $\cdot$ Geographic accessibility factors did not change significantly. Most of patients had utilized health resources in Banwol and Anyang area. 3) Cultural inclination in the shopping-around phenomenon has shown difference among age groups. The age group' over 50 years' preferred traditional health resources to modern health resources. 4) Consistency of health seeking behavior on the shopping around phenomenon has shown difference according to the degrees of patients' economic affordability and those of psychological satisfaction toward modern health services. However, there were some restrictions in this thesis ; a) the study was limited to the 3rd health seeking career so it did not allow us to collect more informations after that, b) the study was not able to carry out causal analysis on patients health behavior determinated by explanatory model of health resources, and c) the study was not able to take into consideration of factors connected with social structural circumstances. Despite of restrictions described above, we are sure that this thesis would promote health providers' understanding toward patients' inclinations, through which they could provide efficient and accurate medical service.

• Proceedings of the Plant Resources Society of Korea Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.184-184
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• 2005

• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.83-94
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• 2012

Objectives : This study aimed to investigate the use and patterns of health care resources of local patients and to analyze the health seeking behaviors focusing on shopping around phenomenon. Methods : Questionnaires on the use of health institution were developed and administered to the residents in Yangsan city, Korea. We selected patients who were suffering from any diseases two months and over. Patients' health seeking behaviors were categorized, and the factors for selecting health institutions in each visiting stages were analyzed. Results : 139 local patients participated in the survey, and 130 completed questionnaires were analyzed. We found that there were sixty eight different types of medical utilization paths. The most frequent path was 'western clinics ${\rightarrow}$ Korean medicine hospitals or clinics ${\rightarrow}$ western clinics'. Only 6 patients started at Korean medicine, however, 16 patients(12.3%) finalized their treatment at Korean medicine hospitals or clinics. In most health seeking stages, patients tended to select health resources by their own decisions, and the geographic factor was the key reason to select health resources. Conclusions : Patients had not any stable forms to treat with their diseases, and we observed diversified patterns in the health seeking behaviors of patients, a typical shopping around phenomenon.

• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.269-279
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• 2014

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to investigate the oral health center operation and to activate the program development of public oral health center. Methods : Delphi analyses were utilized by the recruited expert panel from August to September in 2012. Results : The difficulty in operation of the oral health centers is the human resources management. In order to solve the human resources operation, utilization of the local human resources is the best choice of the solution. The next choice was the designation of the oral health expert in Ministry of Health and Welfare. So the expert can activate the public oral health care system for the disabled and the underprivileged classes in the long term. Conclusions : In order to activate the oral health centers, Ministry of Health and Welfare should promote the public health center function connected with the cooperation of the Association of dental hygienists.