• Journal of Korean Academy of Fundamentals of Nursing
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.171-180
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• 2009

Purpose: This study was done to examine the frequency of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), entrance examination stress, mental health, and quality of life among adolescent women. Methods: A survey conducted to collect data from 925 adolescent women in Gyeonggi Province. The measurements included the Rome III criteria (to diagnose IBS), the entrance examination stress scale (to evaluate stress), symptom check list90R (SCL-90R to evaluate mental health), and World Health Organization Quality of Life Abbreviated Version (WHOQOL-BREF to evaluate quality of life). Frequency, $X^2$-tests, t-test, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the SPSS 16.0 program were used to analyze the data. Results: The frequency of IBS in the women was 22.8%. One hundred thirty eight women (65.4%) had the mixed constipation and diarrhea subtype of IBS. Compared to the women without IBS, those with IBS reported significantly higher scores on entrance examination stress scale, SCL-90R, all subscales of SCL-90R, and lower scores on WOLQOL-BREF. Conclusion: Nursing interventions targeting adolescent women with IBS should be developed in order to alleviate the associated stress and mental health and to promote quality of life.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.253-257
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• 2014

Arsenic is a ubiquitous, naturally occurring metalloid that may be a significant risk factor for cancer after exposure to contaminated drinking water, cigarettes, foods, industry, occupational environment, and air. Among the various routes of arsenic exposure, drinking water is the largest source of arsenic poisoning worldwide. Arsenic exposure from ingested foods usually comes from food crops grown in arsenic-contaminated soil and/or irrigated with arsenic-contaminated water. According to a recent World Health Organization report, arsenic from contaminated water can be quickly and easily absorbed and depending on its metabolic form, may adversely affect human health. Recently, the US Food and Drug Administration regulations for metals found in cosmetics to protect consumers against contaminations deemed deleterious to health; some cosmetics were found to contain a variety of chemicals including heavy metals, which are sometimes used as preservatives. Moreover, developing countries tend to have a growing number of industrial factories that unfortunately, harm the environment, especially in cities where industrial and vehicle emissions, as well as household activities, cause serious air pollution. Air is also an important source of arsenic exposure in areas with industrial activity. The presence of arsenic in airborne particulate matter is considered a risk for certain diseases. Taken together, various potential pathways of arsenic exposure seem to affect humans adversely, and future efforts to reduce arsenic exposure caused by environmental factors should be made.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.478-485
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• 2009

This study was performed to assess airborne fungi concentrations during fall in eight subway stations in Seoul, Korea. The purpose of this study was to investigate appropriate culture media and evaluate factors affecting airborne fungi concentrations. Results indicated that airborne fungi concentrations showed log-normal distribution. Thus, geometric mean (GM) and geometric standard deviation (GSD) were calculated. The GM of airborne fungi concentrations cultured on malt extract agar (MEA) media was 466 $cfu/m^3$ (GSD 3.12; Range 113~4,172 $cfu/m^3$) and the GM of concentrations cultured on DG18 media was 242 $cfu/m^3$ (GSD 4.75; Range 49~6,093 $cfu/m^3$). Both of GM values exceeded 150 $cfu/m^3$, the guideline of World Health Organization (WHO). There was no significant difference between two fungi concentrations cultured on MEA and DG18 media, respectively. Two factors, such as relative humidity and depths of subway stations were significantly related to airborne fungi concentrations. It is recommended that special consideration should be given to deeper subway stations for improvement of indoor air quality.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.1111-1116
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• 2006

Medical science is an area of study that focuses on maintaining health and treating disease. However, modern medicine focuses on treating disease and neglects methodology of maintaining health. Although the definition of heal this defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) and as the concept of harmonizing Yin and Yang in Korean medicine, there is no specific details regarding the definition. Thus, the following conclusion was obtained after the concept of health is viewed through Yin-Yang(陰陽), Vital Essence(精), Qi(氣), and Healthy Person(平人). Although Yin and Yang have opposite properties, they work very closely, maintaining the overall balance and harmony. Secondly, Vin and Yang would each function by the effects of one another, and the body could maintain normal physiological activities through this function. Thirdly, it maintains normal physiological state through the ascending Kidney-Water and descending Heart-Yang(水升火降). Fourthly, Vital Essence is divided into the congenital Essence(先天之精) and the acquired Essence(後天之精) in which the former is related with reproduction and the latter, nourishing. Fifthly, Qi is resistant to pathogens and related with the physique so that Qi and physique should be balanced. Sixthly, Healthy Person is the state where the exchange of Qi-Blood is active.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.31 no.3
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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.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.206-219
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• 2019

This paper aims to demonstrate current health expenditure (CHE) and National Health Accounts of the years 2018 constructed according to the SHA2011, which is a manual for System of Health Accounts (SHA) that was published jointly by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Eurostat, and World Health Organization in 2011. Comparison is made with international trends by collecting and analyzing health accounts of OECD member countries. Particularly, scale and trends of the total CHE financing as well as public-private mix are parsed in depth. In the case of private financing, estimation of total expenditures for (revenues by) provider groups (HP) is made from both survey on the benefit coverage rate of National Health Insurance (by National Health Insurance Service) and Economic Census and Service Industry Census (by National Statistical Office); and other pieces of information from Korean Health Panel Study, etc. are supplementarily used to allocate those totals into functional classifications. CHE was 144.4 trillion won in 2018, which accounts for 8.1% of Korea's gross domestic product (GDP). It was a big increase of 12.8 trillion won, or 9.7%, from the previous year. GDP share of Korean CHE has already been close to the average of OECD member countries. Government and compulsory schemes' share (or public share), 59.8% of the CHE in 2018, is much lower than the OECD average of 73.6%. 'Transfers from government domestic revenue' share of total revenue of health financing was 16.9% in Korea, lower than the other social insurance countries. When it comes to 'compulsory contributory health financing schemes,' 'transfers from government domestic revenue' share of 13.5% was again much lower compared to Japan (43.0%) and Belgium (30.1%) with social insurance scheme.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.125-137
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• 2020

Objectives: This study was aimed to present the experts' opinions for the successful application of Korean traditional medical practices (KTMPs) to the International Classification of Health Intervention (ICHI). Methods: Two doctors of Korean Medicine and two health information managers who had tried coding 131 KTMPs using ICHI participated in the focus group discussion. The remarks from the discussion were summarized according to the thematic analysis method. Results: The participants expected ICHI to be mainly used for statistics when applied to TKMPs. It can be used for payment systems as well, but it was expected that additional work would be required. They thought the current version of the ICHI did not sufficiently reflect the KMTPs of the real world, and even the interventions already included in the ICHI were not explained enough in the system. They thought it would not be easy to explain more KTMPs within the current structure of the ICHI, but they also said it seemed possible. In the process, rather than adding entirely new stem codes, it would be better to generate new combinations of the existing codes, to suppose subdivided codes, and to utilize the include terms or extension codes. Conclusions: For the successful introduction of ICHI, clarifying the definition of each intervention of KTMPs is a top priority. In addition, it is necessary to continue the matching work of ICHI - KMPTs and also required to make this effort together with the field of traditional medicine and complementary medicine worldwide.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.307-310
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• 2020

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has placed unprecedented pressure on healthcare systems, even in advanced economies. While the number of cases of SARS-CoV-2 in Africa compared to other continents has so far been low, there are concerns about under-reporting, inadequate diagnostic tools, and insufficient treatment facilities. Moreover, proactiveness on the part of African governments has been under scrutiny. For instance, issues have emerged regarding the responsiveness of African countries in closing international borders to limit trans-continental transmission of the virus. Overdependence on imported products and outsourced services could have contributed to African governments' hesitation to shut down international air and seaports. In this era of emerging and re-emerging pathogens, we recommend that African nations should consider self-sufficiency in the health sector as an urgent priority, as this will not be the last outbreak to occur. In addition to the Regional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement fund (US$600 million) provided by the World Bank for strengthening health systems and disease surveillance, each country should further establish an epidemic emergency fund for epidemic preparedness and response. We also recommend that epidemic surveillance units should create a secure database of previous and ongoing pandemics in terms of aetiology, spread, and treatment, as well as financial management records. Strategic collection and analysis of data should also be a central focus of these units to facilitate studies of disease trends and to estimate the scale of requirements in preparation and response to any future pandemic or epidemic.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.19-30
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• 2021

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is one of common chronic diseases leading to severe health complications that may cause death. The disease influences individuals, community, and the government due to the continuous monitoring, lifelong commitment, and the cost of treatment. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers Saudi Arabia as one of the top 10 countries in diabetes prevalence across the world. Since most of the medical services are provided by the government, the cost of the treatment in terms of hospitals and clinical visits and lab tests represents a real burden due to the large scale of the disease. The ability to predict the diabetic status of a patient without the laboratory tests by performing screening based on some personal features can lessen the health and economic burden caused by diabetes alone. The goal of this paper is to investigate the prediction of diabetic and prediabetic patients by considering factors other than the laboratory tests, as required by physicians in general. With the data obtained from local hospitals, medical records were processed to obtain a dataset that classified patients into three classes: diabetic, prediabetic, and non-diabetic. After applying three machine learning algorithms, we established good performance for accuracy, precision, and recall of the models on the dataset. Further analysis was performed on the data to identify important non-laboratory variables related to the patients for diabetes classification. The importance of five variables (gender, physical activity level, hypertension, BMI, and age) from the person's basic health data were investigated to find their contribution to the state of a patient being diabetic, prediabetic or normal. Our analysis presented great agreement with the risk factors of diabetes and prediabetes stated by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and other health institutions worldwide. We conclude that by performing class-specific analysis of the disease, important factors specific to Saudi population can be identified, whose management can result in controlling the disease. We also provide some recommendations learnt from this research.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.370-396
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• 2024

COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 30 January 2020. The lifestyle of people all over the world has changed since. In most cases, the pandemic has appeared to create severe mental disorders, anxieties, and depression among people. Mostly, the researchers have been conducting surveys to identify the impacts of the pandemic on the mental health of people. Despite the better quality, tailored, and more specific data that can be generated by surveys,social media offers great insights into revealing the impact of the pandemic on mental health. Since people feel connected on social media, thus, this study aims to get the people's sentiments about the pandemic related to mental issues. Word Cloud was used to visualize and identify the most frequent keywords related to COVID-19 and mental health disorders. This study employs Majority Voting Ensemble (MVE) classification and individual classifiers such as Naïve Bayes (NB), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Logistic Regression (LR) to classify the sentiment through tweets. The tweets were classified into either positive, neutral, or negative using the Valence Aware Dictionary or sEntiment Reasoner (VADER). Confusion matrix and classification reports bestow the precision, recall, and F1-score in identifying the best algorithm for classifying the sentiments.