• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.218-238
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• 2013

The objective of my paper is to investigate historical change in concepts of medical geography and to present its historical vision. Modern medical geography was established in the name of medical topography in Europe where it had to control tropical diseases in the course of exploration and voyages for colonial interests. England developed medical geography in the name of sanitary reform, France did so for civilizing mission, and geomedicine prevailed in Germany. The twentieth century witnessed two traditions of medical geography, with focus on disease ecology and medical care system, respectively. In addition, the paper emphasizes the significance of cartography of disease as knowledge as power. As the identity of place becomes increasingly important in relation to health at the around of the twenty-first century, geography of health has emerged as a new promising discipline independently of medical and public health geography.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.677-699
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• 2012

Climate changes may cause substantial changes in spatial patterns and distribution of vector-borne diseases (VBD's), which will result in a significant threat to humans and emerge as an important public health problem that the international society needs to solve. As global warming becomes widespread and the Korean peninsula characterizes subtropical climate, the potentials of climate-driven disease outbreaks and spread rapidly increase with changes in land use, population distributions, and ecological environments. Vector-borne diseases are typically infected by insects such as mosquitoes and ticks, and infected hosts and vectors increased dramatically as the habitat ranges of the VBD agents have been expanded for the past 20 years. Medical geography integrates and processes a wide range of public health data and indicators at both local and regional levels, and ultimately helps researchers identify spatiotemporal mechanism of the diseases determining interactions and relationships between spatial and non-spatial data. Spatial epidemiology is a new and emerging area of medical geography integrating geospatial sciences, environmental sciences, and epidemiology to further uncover human health-environment relationships. An introduction of GIS-based disease monitoring system to the public health surveillance system is among the important future research agenda that medical geography can significantly contribute to. Particularly, real-time monitoring methods, early-warning systems, and spatial forecasting of VBD factors will be key research fields to understand the dynamics of VBD's.

• 대한예방의학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.25-26
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• 2000

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.17
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• pp.7737-7742
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• 2015

Background: Cancer is one of the common causes of disability and mortality in the world. The present study aimed to define the spatiotemporal distribution of gastrointestinal tract cancers using a geographic information system (GIS) over the time period of 2007-2012 in Kermanshah-Iran. Materials and Methods: The method of studying was descriptive-analytical as well as comparative with gastrointestinal tract cancer patients based in the City of Kermanshah over the time period covered. For data analysis, the GIS and SPSS 16.0 were applied. Results: According to the pathological reports within the space of 5 years, 283 cases of gastrointestinal tract cancer (157 in males, 156 in females) were reported. The performed tests in terms of spatial distribution in the environment of GIS indicated that the disease demonstrated a clustered pattern in the City of Kermanshah. More to the point, some loci of this disease have emerged in the City of Kermanshah that in the first level, 6 neighborhoods with 29-59 cases of this disease per square kilometer and in the second level, 15-29 cases. Conclusions: Gastrointestinal tract cancer demonstrated an ascending trend within the space of 5 years of research and the spatiotemporal distribution of cancer featured a concentrated and clustered pattern in the City of Kermanshah.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.473-493
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• 2012

Malaria infection is sensitively influenced by regional meteorological conditions along with global climate change. Remote sensing techniques have become an important tool for extraction of climatic and environmental factors, including rainfall, temperature, surface water, soil moisture, and land use, which are directly linked to the habitat qualities of malaria mosquitoes. Improvement of sensor fidelity with higher spatial and spectral resolution, new multinational sensor development, and decreased data cost have nurtured diverse remote sensing applications in malaria research. In 1984, eradication of endemic malaria was declared in Korea, but reemergence of malaria was reported in mid-1990s. Considering constant changes in malaria cases since 2000, the epidemiological management of the disease needs careful monitoring. Geographically, northmost counties neighboring North Korea have been ranked high in the number of malaria cases. High infection rates in these areas drew special attention and led to a hypothesis that malaria dispersion in these border counties might be caused by north-origin, malaria-bearing adult mosquitoes. Habitat conditions of malaria mosquitoes are important parameters for prediction of the vector abundance. However, it should be realized that malaria infection and transmission is a complex mechanism, where non-environmental factors, including human behavior, demographic structure, landscape structure, and spatial relationships between human residence and the vector habitats, are also significant considerations in the framework of medical geography.

• The Journal of Korean Medical History
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.33-40
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• 2014

Traditional medicine in Asian countries show similarity according to geography, building up their own medical tradition upon indigenous cultural background. Mongolian medicine, in particular, displays district fusion of several medical systems accepted from neighboring countries adding to their traditional system. Those are Mongol Dhom medicine, acupuncture and moxibustion medicine, medicine of "Four Medical Tantras (四部醫典)", and combined system of Mongolian and biomedicine. Compared to East asian medicine, this is a different kind of diversity or hybridity resulting from idiosyncrasy of nomadic culture. Each current of Mongolian medical tradition has its own origin of historical backdrop. Mongol Dhom originated from ancient nomadic life, and medicine of "Four Medical Tantras (四部醫典)" was formed along with transmission of Tibetan Buddhism. Acupuncture and moxibustion is directly related to Chinese medical tradition, however, moxibustion is also referred to be regional origination. Lastly, biomedicine was transplanted during the modernization era, encouraging scientific approach toward Mongolian traditional medicine and producing combined medical practice. It is effective to derive each particular aspects of Mongolian medicine and analyze its specificity, in order to properly understand current Mongolian medical system. This paper aims at discovering socio-cultural meanings of each current and their nomadic feature beneath the diversity.

• 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.

• 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.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 2018

This study aims to analyze the regional patterns of user-provider in medical services for spatial improvement of national health care delivery system in south Korea. By using the National Health Insurance Service National Sample Cohort DB, the characteristics and changes in the medical service cases served outside of residing regions are found. In 2013 the rate of the cases served outside of residing regions was declined slightly and users of medical institutions outside of their residing area tended to have high income level relatively and to visit hospitals than clinics. And departments visited have changed from 2002.

• Journal of Korean Medical classics
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.131-142
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• 2009

Sasang constitutional medicine was born on basis of constitutional cognition in Korean History. Only if we look at Sasang constitutional medicine on the environment of korean unique culture, geography and historical tradition, the true feature come into view, and on the contrary we could grasp to which degree it has general properties. Sasang constitutional medicine pursue inner principles of human being, that has been the most important traditions of Korean medicine. Also that properties are results of continuous confirming academic universality and constant efforts to look for the medicine that is most fit to clinical practice. For the purpose of developing world medicine, we must grow that specific characteristics of Sasang constitutional medicine.