• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.100-126
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• 2017

Objectives: The aim of this study was to measure income differences in smoking prevalence at the district level and to investigate correlations among area deprivation, smoking prevalence, and income differences in smoking prevalence, stratified by urbanity. Methods: Data were pooled from the Community Health Survey data of South Korea between 2008 and 2014. The age-standardized prevalence of smoking and its interquintile income differences were calculated. We conducted correlation analyses to investigate the association of the deprivation index with smoking prevalence and interquintile differences in smoking prevalence. Results: Across 245 districts, the median prevalence of smoking in men was 45.9% (95% confidence interval [CI], 43.4 to 48.5%), with an interquartile range (IQR) of 4.6% points. In women, the median prevalence was 3.0% (95% CI, 2.4 to 3.6%) and IQR was 1.6% points. The median interquintile difference in smoking prevalence was 7.4% points (95% CI, 1.6 to 13.2% points) in men and 2.7% points (95% CI, 0.5 to 4.9% points) in women. The correlation coefficients for the association between the deprivation index and smoking prevalence was 0.58, 0.15, -0.22 in metropolitan, urban, and rural areas, respectively, among men, and 0.54, -0.33, -0.43 among women. No meaningful correlation was found between area deprivation and interquintile difference in smoking prevalence. The correlation between smoking prevalence and interquintile difference in smoking prevalence was more evident in women than in men. Conclusions: This study provides evidence of geographical variations in smoking prevalence and interquintile difference in smoking prevalence. Neither smoking prevalence nor the deprivation index was closely correlated with interquintile income difference in smoking prevalence. Measuring inequalities in smoking prevalence is crucial to developing policies aimed at reducing inequalities in smoking.

• The Journal of Korean Society for School & Community Health Education
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.43-54
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• 2009

Objectives: Adolescent health risk behaviors are typically smoking, drinking, violence, and the use of harmful media. The articles published in the literature are about those behaviors which was individually studied. Teenagers, however, are likely to have those behaviors simultaneously such as smoking and drinking. Also, the use of media and harmful materials are common among adolescents. This study was conducted with the purpose of investigating the relationship of smoking, drinking, the use of harmful media. Methods: This study was a secondary analysis using the data drawn from National Youth Committee's survey of adolescent harmful environment in 2007. The self-reported questionnaires were administered to 7,409 students attending junior high schools between October 10 and November 20. The samples were randomly selected based on strata of geography, schools, and gender. Results: Junior high school students used the harmful media ranging from 13.9 % to 31% depending on the type of media. The most accessed one was adult-only games. The current smoking rates was 5.4% and drinking rates was 27.4%. There are statistically significant relationship between smoking and the use of harmful media, between drinking and the use of harmful media, and between smoking and drinking. The behavioral factors that can predict the use of harmful media based on logistic regression analysis are the grade and smoking. Conclusion: Students were at risk of engaging health risk behaviors as they were getting older. Like other literature, smoking was a significant predictor of adolescent behavioral problems.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.1259-1275
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• 2015

Background: This study reviewed the published evidence as to how prostate cancer outcomes vary across geographical remoteness and area level disadvantage. Materials and Methods: A review of the literature published from January 1998 to January 2014 was undertaken: Medline and CINAHL databases were searched in February to May 2014. The search terms included terms of 'Prostate cancer' and 'prostatic neoplasms' coupled with 'rural health', 'urban health', 'geographic inequalities', 'spatial', 'socioeconomic', 'disadvantage', 'health literacy' or 'health service accessibility'. Outcome specific terms were 'incidence', 'mortality', 'prevalence', 'survival', 'disease progression', 'PSA testing' or 'PSA screening', 'treatment', 'treatment complications' and 'recurrence'. A further search through internet search engines was conducted to identify any additional relevant published reports. Results: 91 papers were included in the review. While patterns were sometimes contrasting, the predominate patterns were for PSA testing to be more common in urban (5 studies out of 6) and affluent areas (2 of 2), higher prostate cancer incidence in urban (12 of 22) and affluent (18 of 20), greater risk of advanced stage prostate cancer in rural (7 of 11) and disadvantaged (8 of 9), higher survival in urban (8 of 13) and affluent (16 of 18), greater access or use of definitive treatment services in urban (6 of 9) and affluent (7 of 7), and higher prostate mortality in rural (10 of 20) and disadvantaged (8 of 16) areas. Conclusions: Future studies may need to utilise a mixed methods approach, in which the quantifiable attributes of the individuals living within areas are measured along with the characteristics of the areas themselves, but importantly include a qualitative examination of the lived experience of people within those areas. These studies should be conducted across a range of international countries using consistent measures and incorporate dialogue between clinicians, epidemiologists, policy advocates and disease control specialists.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.44-50
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• 2001

This study was carried out to investigate characteristics of water quality and THMs formation in lake-waters at kunsan. Of the parameters examined for water quality, pH, alkalinity, SO$_4$$^{-2}$ and Co- reflected the characteristics according to the origin, geography and water source of lakes while COD, SS, T-P, T-N and chlorophyll-a corelatively reflected well the influence of pollution factors around factors around lakes. The result of water quality analysis showed that most lakes in Kunsan area have the severe eutropnication problem, especially in summer. In lake-waters, THMFP overally continued to increase until 48 hour with the reaction time and THMs formation was largely achieved within 24 hour of the reaction time. The average formation ratio were 68.2% for CHCl$_3$, 23.6% for CHCl$_2$Br, 7.6% for CHClBr$_3$ and 0.6% for CHBr$_3$respectively and much difference depending on the reaction time was not shown. Overally, 96h-THEFP levels in lakes were high during June~September and showed higher tencency in lakes where could be regarded more contaminated on the whole. These results suggest that THMFP may be available for the management of lake-water quality as one if the useful parameters for the general evaluation of contamination. 96h-THEMFP failed to show the strong corelation individually with pH, TOC, COD and chlorphyll-a.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.676-688
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• 2017

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the migration patterns of new nurses and experienced nurses and to identify the factors influencing inter-regional migration for solving regional imbalances of clinical nurses in South Korea. Methods: This study involved a secondary analysis of data from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple logistic regression analysis. Results: New nurses tended to migrate from Kyunggi to Seoul. However, experienced nurses tended to migrate from Seoul and Chungchung to Kyunggi. Significant predictors of inter-regional migration among new nurses were location and nurse staffing grade of hospitals. Significant predictors of inter-regional migration among experienced nurses were location, hospital type, nurse staffing grade, ownership of hospitals and age of nurses. Conclusion: Inter-regional migration occupied a small portion of total hospital movement among clinical nurses. The regional imbalances of nurses were not caused by the migration from non-metropolitan areas to Seoul. Nurse shortage problems in the small and medium hospitals of the non-metropolitan area can be solved only through improvement of work environment.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.2071-2077
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• 2013

Esophageal cancer is a mjaor health problems in many parts of the world. A geographical information system (GIS) allows investigation of the geographical distribution of diseases. The purpose of the present study was to explore the relationship between esophageal cancer and effective climatic factors using GIS. The dispersion distribution and the relationship between environmental factors effective on cancer were measured using Arc GIS. The highest degree of spread was in Germi town and the least was in Ardabil city. There was a significant relationship between effective environmental factors and esophageal cancer in Ardabil province. The results indicated that environmental factors probably are influential in determining the incidence of esophageal cancer. Also, these results can be considered as a window to future comprehensive research on esophageal cancer and related risk factors.

• Spatial Information Research
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.45-55
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• 2010

Place based intervention has become an important strategy for the ubiquitous city initiative. However, the role of the ubiquitous built environment in determining urban quality of life has not investigated fully. Using place as a relational space where people access u-infrastructure, u-health and u-services, this paper examines the relationship between spatial variations in the provision of ICTs and the spatial reconfiguration of quality of life operating at different geographical scales across Australia. Based on a case study of the state of Queensland in Australia, we emphasize the need for a place based approach to ubiquitous technologies and infrastructure provision in different socio economic hierarchies of space and place.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.51-65
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• 2003

Objectives： To examine the regional mortality differences in The Republic of Korea according to geographic location. Methods： All 232 administrative districts of the Republic of Korea in 1998 were studied according to their geographic locations by dividing each district into three categories； "metropolis," "urban," and "rural". Crude mortality rates for doth sexes from total deaths as well as the three major causes of death in Korea (cardiovascular disease, cancer, and external causes) were calculated with raw data from the "1998 report on the causes of death statistics" and resident registration data. Standardized mortality ratios (SMR) were calculated using the indirect standardization method. Poisson regression analyses were performed to examine the effects of geographic locations on the risk of death. To correct for the socioeconomic differences of each region, the percentage of old ($\geq$ 65 years old) population, the number of privately owned cars per 100 population, and per capita manufacturing production industries were included in the model. Results： Most SMRs were the lowest in the metropolis and the highest in the rural areas. These differences were more prominent in men and in deaths from external causes. In deaths from cancer in women, the rural region showed the lowest SMR. In Poisson regression analysis after correcting for regional socioeconomic differences, the risk of death from all causes significantly increased in both urban (OR＝1.111) and rural (OR＝1.100) regions, except for rural women, compared to the metropolis region. In men, the rural region showed higher risk (OR＝1.180) than the urban region (OR＝1.l51). For cardiovascular disease and cancer, significant differences were not found between geographic locations, except in urban women for cardiovascular disease (OR＝1.151) and in rural women for cancer (OR＝0.887), compared to metropolis women. In deaths from external causes, the risk ratios significantly increased in both urban and rural regions and an increasing tendency from the metropolis to the rural region was clearly observed in both sexes. Conclusions： Regional mortality differences according to geographic location exist in The Republic of Korea and further research and policy approaches to reduce these differences are needed. to reduce these differences are needed.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.177-181
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• 2021

Allergy is an immune response that appears in certain people, and reactions such as coughing, shortness of breath, and hives occur. The immune system plays an important role in homeostasis and host defense, and allergies cause hypersensitivity reactions when an imbalance of immunity occurs. Mutations in the TLR genes are associated with autoimmune conditions such as allergies and asthma. It has been reported that a locus in the TLR1-TLR6-TLR10 region may be associated with atopic sensitization or allergy. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to select an allergy patient group and a healthy control group to determine how the genetic mutation of TLR1 affects the onset of disease. This study was conducted in 709 patients and 5,025 control groups out of 10,956 patients with data from KARE and HEXA cohorts. As a result of logistic regression analysis of 6 SNPs selected from the TLR1 gene, only rs117033348 showed a statistically significant correlation (P = 0.002356). The influence of rs117033348 was examined using PolyPhen-2, and a significant result was shown. Therefore, it can be predicted that the G base in rs117033348 will have an influence on the human body. In addition, Geography of Genetic Variants browser was used to confirm the geographical distribution of allele frequencies for the TLR1 gene. Although it was found that there was a large racial difference in the prevalence of TLR1 SNP, it could be confirmed that the polymorphism of rs117033348 conducted in this study was only specific in East Asia when compared with each race.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.388-402
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• 2017

This paper presents an enhancement of the two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method for measuring spatial accessibility between three age groups, addressing the problem of uniform access within the catchment by applying multiple impedance function to account for distance decay and by applying weights to different age groups to account for medical service preference. The enhancement is provided to be another special care of the gravity model. When applying this modified three-step floating catchment area to measure the spatial access to emergency medical services in a study area, Chungnam province in South Korea, we find that it reveals the variation of spatial accessibility patterns between cities and rural areas and delineates more spatially explicit medical service shortage areas in southern Chungnam areas, especially remoted local rural areas. Finally, this method may be used to help the health and medical service divisions and the state departments improve designation of medical shortage areas. From the discussions, it is easy to implement in planning spatial policies of medical service and straightforward to be used as a basic, but core element for health and medical strategies in the province.