한국의 건강불평등 지표와 정책과제(Developing health inequalities indicators and monitoring the status of health inequalities in Korea)

The first of a multi-year project on measuring and monitoring health inequalities in Korea, this study is aimed at developing relevant indicators. Drawing on the framework of the Third Korean Health Plan 2020 and the health inequality model of WHO CSDH(2008), we identified five indicator categories: socioeconomic status; region, health behavior, health outcomes (healthy life expectancy, morbidity, mortality, etc.) and health service accessibility. The authors reviewed existing social status indicators, which have been used in different ways by different researchers. We measured indicators for the "region" category, taking into account three dimensions of deprivation (social, economic, and regional). For "health behavior", the we measured health inequalities in terms of indicators mirroring age, income level, educational attainment, and occupation. Gaps were identified between different population groups in smoking rate, drinking rate, and physical activity. In the category of "healthy life expectancy", we found gaps between men and women and between regions. Both all-cause mortality and the cause of death varied depending on gender and region; suicide rates varied with differences in educational attainment, and such variances were found to have been rising in some populations. (The rest is ommitted)