Community-based Environmental Health Policy Support Program

Abstract

Many environmental health issues in various communities are recently emerging in Korea. Accordingly, it is necessary to establish ‘community-based environmental health policy support program’ in order to determine the priorities in the local environmental health hazards and to solve the problems by considering the local characteristics. Based on CARE program of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is globally acknowledged and considered as the most systematic environmental health policy, this study provides the basic principles and framework of the domestic community-based environmental health policy support program. This study also proposes a hybrid method of the environmental health policy program which is the combination of top-down method, centered on the central government and bottom-up method, centered on the local communities. The basic framework of the Korean community-based environmental health policy support program consists of a few steps, such as planing environmental health policy support program, analyzing current status of environmental health, prioritizing the environmental health issues, implementing hazards mitigation plan, and monitoring the results of the program. Limitations and complementary points of the program have been suggested through a trial application conducted at Chungcheongnam-do Province.