• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• 제40권6호
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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.

• 대한예방한의학회지
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.147-153
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• 2004

This parer reviews the current situation on traditional medicine in the western pacific region. It mainly include government, scientific community and industry interests, national policies, practices and education, public financing systems and self-regulatory associations.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• 제1권1호
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• pp.43-57
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• 1999

One of the most fundamental and the oldest issues in the provision of health care throughout the world has been the issue of the role of the public and private sector of health care, and the relationship between them. This paper describes issues associated with the concept of health oriented partnerships in the United Kingdom and seeks to contrast public and private partnerships both in health and in health care. In the United Kingdom it is suggested that health care is conceived by the population to equate to the National Health Service(NHS) with "add on" private health care for certain sectors of the community and within certain well defined clinical parameters. This paper can provide us with valuable information on the characteristics of UK health care systems, current health policies as well as issues relating to the public and private partnerships in health/ health care in the UK, thus offer important policy implications for the improvement of Korean health care system which lacks health-oriented coordinations and partnership between public and private sector very considerably.

• 의학교육논단
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• 제24권1호
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• pp.18-34
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to clarify the background of the controversial attempt to establish a new public medical school linked to compulsory service as a means of strengthening public healthcare in Korea, and to raise anticipated problems with possible solutions. In Korea, healthcare is predominantly provided by the private sector focused on medical care, rather than public healthcare, even under the national health insurance system. The government has been mainly in charge of public health and unmet medical services from a residual perspective, but health inequalities still exist. To resolve this issue, the government created the concept of public health and medical service (PHMS) from a universal perspective and tried to strengthen the infrastructure of public healthcare and to foster core PHMS doctors by establishing a new public medical school linked to compulsory service in medically vulnerable areas. This study investigated the reality and concept of the new public medical school planned by the government, and identified problems such as the possibility of obtaining accreditation and evaluation before its establishment, the side effects of dividing doctors' roles, the waste of huge amounts of resources, and insensitive policies. In conclusion, in order to resolve health inequalities in Korea, we need to train doctors through medical school education that strengthens the social responsibility of doctors along with strengthening public healthcare infrastructure, and to provide a better environment for doctors working in medically vulnerable areas through sophisticated policies.

• 대한예방한의학회지
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• 제9권2호
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• pp.17-41
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• 2005

Current Korean medical system is evaluated as inefficient and the government is planning a new medical development plan to provide guaranteed life-long medical service and more efficient medical system Korean medicine also needs to participate as the primary medical provider and strengthen public recognition. The needs for active participation are essential to prevent irrational medical policies and Korean medicine can exercise medical merits. When the doctors of Korean medicine are recognized as the primary medical provider, not only social rights are served but also provide medical service to less privileged sector of the society. This calls for the establishment of system for attending physician and public health doctor from Korean medicine. Another important issue is the establishment of public medical service at the government level. Doctors of Korean medicine should be posted at the national health center and other public hospitals. Revision of the current policies on Korean medicine must be made to yield concrete outcome of the public Korean medicine service as well as cooperation between the conventional allopathic medical community and the Korean medical community

• 한국환경보건학회지
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• 제47권5호
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• pp.379-383
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• 2021

This paper discussed environmental health policies for the past and coming decade by reviewing the First Comprehensive Environmental Health Plan (2011~2020) and introducing the Second Comprehensive Environmental Health Plan (2021~2030). The major achievement of the First Comprehensive Environmental Health Plan was the establishment of receptor-oriented environmental health policies. However, the main limitations were insufficient policy support for relief and/or recovery from environmental pollution damage and low public awareness of environmental health policies. The Second Comprehensive Environmental Health Plan presents the following major policy tasks: establish an omnidirectional environment health investigation and monitoring system, provide customized environmental health services, improve the environmental health damage relief and recovery system, and promote regional environmental health policies. The Second Plan has a clear distinction from the First Plan in that it expands the field of environmental health from the prevention and management of environmental risk factors to proactive damage response and recovery, which will effectively contribute to alleviating the burden of environmental disease.

• 보건행정학회지
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• 제31권3호
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• pp.312-327
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• 2021

Background: Infection prevention and control (IPC) to manage healthcare-associated infection (HCAI) has emerged as one of the most significant public health issues in Korea. The purpose of this study is to draw implications in IPC policies by analyzing the context, process, and major actors in policy development and comparatively analyzing IPC policy contents of Korea with three other countries. Additionally, IPC policies were analyzed in the context of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to provide implications for future pandemics and HCAI events. Methods: This study incorporates a qualitative approach based on document and content analysis, applying codes and thematic categorization. IPC policy contents are comparatively analyzed by adopting the concept model, developed by the World Health Organization, which consists of core components of IPC structure at the national and facility level. Results: National IPC policies were developed within a complex social and political context, through the involvement of various stakeholders. IPC policies in Korea place a high emphasis on establishing IPC programs and built environments in healthcare facilities, whereas there were potentials for improvement in policies involving patients and promoting a safety culture. IPC policies, which currently focus on general hospitals and certain functions of hospitals, should further be expanded to target all healthcare facilities and functions, to ensure more efficient and sustainable IPC responses in the current and future disease outbreaks. Conclusion: IPC is a complex policy arena and lessons learned from the analysis of existing policies in the context of COVID-19 should provide valuable strategic implications for future policies.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• 제38권3호
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• pp.252-258
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• 2005

Major approaches of Social epidemiology; 1)holistic, ecological approach, 2)population based approach, 3)development and life-course approach, 4)contextual multi-level approach, have stressed the importance of not only social context of health and illness, but also the population based strategy in the health interventions. Ultimately, it provides the conceptual guidelines and methodological tools to lead toward the healthy public policies; integrated efforts to improve condition which people live: secure, safe, adequate, and sustainable livelihoods, lifestyles, and environments, including housing, education, nutrition, information exchange, child care, transportation, and necessary community and personal social and health services.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• 제41권2호
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• pp.41-58
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• 2019

Health capacity to work for the elderly is an essential piece of information for designing social policies in an aging society. Here, we assess the health capacity to work of older men in South Korea and provide a cross-country comparison. Following the methodology proposed by Milligan and Wise (2012), which uses the cohort mortality rate as a proxy for overall health status, we quantify the additional employment capacity of current older men in reference to the mortality-employment relationship of a generation ago. Despite the high employment rate of older men in South Korea, we find substantial additional employment capacity among older men (those aged 55 or more) as of 2016 comparable in size to those found in other advanced countries. We also find evidence that older men are not merely capable of working but are also willing to work, and many of them are increasingly combining pension income and work. These findings suggest that labor supply disincentives for older men embedded in public pension systems in South Korea need to be thoroughly reexamined and adjusted accordingly lest they should inhibit the labor supply of older workers.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• 제52권6호
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• pp.384-392
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• 2019

Objectives: This study aimed to explore the health inequality discourse in the Korean press by analyzing newspaper articles using a relatively new content analysis technique. Methods: This study used the search term "health inequality" to collect articles containing that term that were published between 2000 and 2018. The collected articles went through pre-processing and topic modeling, and the contents and temporal trends of the extracted topics were analyzed. Results: A total of 1038 articles were identified, and 5 topics were extracted. As the number of studies on health inequality has increased over the past 2 decades, so too has the number of news articles regarding health inequality. The extracted topics were public health policies, social inequalities in health, inequality as a social problem, healthcare policies, and regional health gaps. The total number of occurrences of each topic increased every year, and the trend observed for each theme was influenced by events related to its contents, such as elections. Finally, the frequency of appearance of each topic differed depending on the type of news source. Conclusions: The results of this study can be used as preliminary data for future attempts to address health inequality in Korea. To make addressing health inequality part of the public agenda, the media's perspective and discourse regarding health inequality should be monitored to facilitate further strategic action.