Health Promotion International Advance Access originally published online on March 6, 2007
Health Promotion International 2007 22(2):155-162; doi:10.1093/heapro/dam004
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Health promotion capacity mapping: the Korean situation
1 Healthy City Research Center Institute of Health and Welfare, Yonsei University, Wonju, Republic of Korea 2 Division of Health Promotion, Seoul Metropolitan Government, Republic of Korea 3 Institute for Medical Informatics, Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Munich, Germany
* Corresponding author. E-mail: ewnam{at}yonsei.ac.kr
| Abstract |
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Ten years ago the Republic of Korea enacted the National Health Promotion Act, setting the stage for health promotion action in the country. A National Health Promotion Fund was established, financed through tobacco taxes, which is now one of the largest in the world. However, despite abundant financial resources, the infrastructure needed to plan, implement, coordinate and evaluate health promotion efforts is still underdeveloped. Currently, health promotion capacity mapping efforts are emerging in Korea. Two international capacity mapping tools have been used to assess the Korean situation, namely HP-Source and the Health Promotion Capacity Profile, which was developed prior to the sixth Global Conference of Health Promotion, held in August 2005 in Bangkok, Thailand. The article summarizes and discusses the results of the capacity mapping exercise, highlights its challenges and suggest ways to improve the accuracy of health promotion capacity mapping.
Key words: capacity; mapping; infrastructure; Korea