No abstract available.
Advisory Committees*

This study aims to evaluate the status of Korean healthcare among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries and to monitor the trend of health care status since 2000. The position value for relative comparison (PARC) index was selected to gauge the level of healthcare status in demand, supply, accessibility, quality, and cost as per healthcare policy aspects. The Mann-Kendall test was conducted to allocate healthcare status of Korea since 2000. The PARC values indicate strength and weakness of Korean healthcare system by the mathematical comparisons. Korea positioned higher in demand, supply, accessibility, and quality. Yet, there are shortages in human resources and primary care. In conclusion, we suggest utilizing this study provides evidence to prioritize health care problems that can lead to establishing healthcare policy.
Decision Making ; Delivery of Health Care ; Health Policy ; Health Priorities ; Humans ; Korea ; Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development ; Primary Health Care

OBJECTIVES: To assess the current public participation in-local health policy and its implications through the analysis of policy networks in health center programs. METHODS: We examined the decision-making process in sub-health center installations and the implementation process in metabolic syndrome management program cases in two districts ('gu's) of Seoul. Participants of the policy network were selected by the snowballing method and completed self-administered questionnaires. Actors, the interactions among actors, and the characteristics of the network were analyzed by Netminer. RESULTS: The results showed that the public is not yet actively participating in the local public health policy processes of decision-making and implementation. In the decision-making process, most of the network actors were in the public sector, while the private sector was a minor actor and participated in only a limited number of issues after the major decisions were made. In the implementation process, the program was led by the health center, while other actors participated passively. CONCLUSIONS: Public participation in Korean public health policy is not yet well activated. Preliminary discussions with various stakeholders, including civil society, are needed before making important local public health policy decisions. In addition, efforts to include local institutions and residents in the implementation process with the public officials are necessary to improve the situation.
Community Networks ; *Consumer Participation ; Decision Making ; *Health Policy ; Health Services Needs and Demand ; Humans ; Metabolic Syndrome X/prevention & control ; Program Development ; Questionnaires

Although the enclosed rate of death certificates has steadily improved when domestic death notification to the government, the percent of well-certified causes of death is still 29th among the 35 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. The death certificate is a medical diagnosis how the deceased died, however, it is difficult to identify the causes of death such as cardiopulmonary arrest, unknown, and death due to old age were up to about 11%. The Statistics Korea selects the final cause of death by linking administrative records such as national health insurance records and national cancer registry data. The World Health Organization's the international statistical classification of diseases and related health problems, 10th revision, volume 2 manual, provides standard forms of death certificate and guidelines for how to write death certificates. It is necessary to provide the education materials or programs to the clinical doctors such as how differentiate the concepts of the underlying cause of death which is the basis of the death cause statistics, originating antecedent cause, main condition and the direct diagnosis of the death. Statistics on the causes of death are continuously needed to improve for the people's perception of death and to upgrade the quality of health care research and policy development.
Cause of Death ; Death Certificates ; Diagnosis ; Education ; Global Health ; Heart Arrest ; International Classification of Diseases ; Korea ; National Health Programs ; Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development ; Policy Making ; Quality of Health Care

The Korean Neuropsychiatric Association (KNPA) was founded in 1945 and has now grown to over 2000 members as of 2003. The Association's academic meeting has also been increasing in size every year. To further develop the academic meeting of the KNPA, the task force team conducted this project. We suggest several points based on analysing the abstracts of the meeting that has been conducted during the last 5 years, the survey results performed at the 2002 annual meeting, the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, and the academic activities of a Korean medical assoction, the Korean Society of Otolaryngology.
Advisory Committees ; Otolaryngology

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of teachers to the learning objectives (specific behavioral objectives, SBO) of their own specialty subjects at real educational situation and also to examine how and when teachers use the SBO. A questionnaire was constructed through a series of discussion at the task force meetings. Opinions from the members were gathered and a list of 21 items of question was generated and finally rephrased each question item to make 20 closed-type and 1 open-type questionnaire. The questionnaires were administered to all the faculties who have been engaged in teaching a subject of basic medical sciences. Although the response rate of the questionnaire was 43%, fairly even distribution of rank proportion of responded faculties were analyzed that could give strong convince of acceptable level of the results. The analysis showed that most of the faculties have fairly high perceptions to the necessity of SBO in teaching situations, while only 25% of thorn administered the SBO to their students. About 33% of the responded faculties construct SBO individually, and 25% have joined to a group work in their own department. A booklet, "Specific Behavioral Objectives in Basic Medical Sciences", has been well known and 85% of them used the booklet as a reference to make their own SBO. 65% of the faculties keep the booklets and the remaining groups answered that they don't have it although some of them have been seen it before.
Advisory Committees ; Humans ; Learning ; Pamphlets ; Surveys and Questionnaires

The management of dyslipidemia is one of the crucial components in the prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Recently, the task force for the management of dyslipidemias of the ESC (European Society of Cardiology) and the EAS (European Atherosclerosis Society) updated their clinical guideline for the first time in 5 years. Although the new guideline maintained the previous recommendations in almost every aspect, there were some updates and modifications in the risk categorization and therapeutic modalities. In this review, I'd like to summarize the updated recommendations and differences compared to the previous version.
Advisory Committees ; Atherosclerosis* ; Cardiovascular Diseases ; Dyslipidemias*

This study was conducted to reduce children's fat intake and to establish healthy dietary lifestyles. To achieve these goals, we searched, collected, and analyzed the materials related to the fat education, based on which the research personnel-professors and graduate students in nutrition and child education and elementary school teachers- discussed to figure out major topics, objectives, and detailed contents and activities appropriate for fat intake reduction. We also organized an advisory committee composed of 15 professionals in related fields to discuss the adequacy and validity of the specific contents. Finally, we systematically organized the contents and developed children's textbooks and teacher's guidebooks. Considering the different cognitive development stages of junior and senior elementary students we developed two different textbooks for each of them which are easy to read and understand, fun to play with lots of activities, and designed to practice into daily life. The contents cover three major topics-the concept of lipid, lipid in food, lipid in life and are composed of 6 units in total. To help teachers understand and and to instruct, teacher's guidebooks contain an overview of the education, specific information and practical guidelines for each class. We developed these education materials with the aim of lowering children's fat consumption and eventually promoting their health welfare; hopefully we expect these materials would be useful for children's nutritional education in the field.
Advisory Committees ; Child ; Humans ; Life Style

This study was conducted to reduce sodium (Na) intake and to establish healthy dietary lifestyles of children. To achieve these goals, we searched, collected, and analyzed the materials related to the Na education, based on which the research personnel-professors and graduate students in nutrition and child education and elementary school teachers discussed to figure out major topics, objectives, and detailed contents and activities appropriate for Na intake reduction. Also a survey was done on the sodium intake and nutrition knowledge of the elementary students. We also organized an advisory committee composed of 15 professionals in related fields to discuss the adequacy and validity of the specific contents. Finally, we systematically organized the contents and developed children's textbooks and teacher's guidebooks. Considering the different cognitive development stages of junior and senior elementary students, we developed two different textbooks for each of them which are easy to read and understand, fun to play with lots of activities, and designed to practice into daily life. The contents cover three major topics-the concept of Na, Na in food, Na in life and are composed of 6 units in total. To help teachers understand and instruct, teacher's guidebook contains an overview of the education, specific information and practical guidelines for each class. We developed these education materials with the aim of lowering children's Na consumption and eventually promoting their health welfare; hopefully we expect these materials would be useful for children's nutritional education in the field.
Advisory Committees ; Child ; Humans ; Life Style ; Sodium

Tremor is one of the most common movement disorders. The classification of tremor disorders was originally proposed in 1998, but subsequent advances have highlighted the limitations of the original criteria. A task force on tremor was convened by the International Parkinson and Movement Disorders Society to review the previous criteria and to develop a revised classification scheme that will allow a more-comprehensive phenotype, thereby facilitating the discovery of specific etiologies. In this review we provide an overview of how to classify tremor disorders according to the new classification of tremors.
Advisory Committees ; Classification ; Movement Disorders ; Phenotype ; Tremor