Cardiovascular diseases, which include coronary heart disease and strokes, are currently the leading cause of deaths in Korea and worldwide, and accounts for 50.3 percent of the total deaths due to occupational diseases. Moreover, the economic burden of workers’ compensation and welfare services, which includes all work, related diseases and industrial accidents, has greatly increased. Also, for small workplaces with fewer than 300 employees, healthcare providers in charge of health management or health promotion programs for industrial workers have rarely been assigned. Despite the fact that these small workplaces accounted for 82.3 percent of the total industrial workers in Korea, these industries did not have occupational health nurses to provide needed healthcare services.
Realizing this seriousness, the study conducted by Hwang aimed to identify the 10-year cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk using routine health screening data and self-reported questionnaires collected from 12,933 male workers in 1041 industries in the region of the Jeolla provinces in Korea from the period between 2009 and 2011. The type of the industries investigated was confined to industries with less than 300 workers, where there is a lack of sufficient and constant health services, such as having officially hired nurses to provide medical services. “The main reason that we chose to investigate small industries was that these small industries had an environment that is much more susceptible to CVD, and that they constituted a large portion of the entire industries in Korea,” Hwang said.
Above graphs show correlation between various risk factors for CVD and age. Notable is that young age groups had an unhealthier lifestyle compared to older age groups.
The result was that the proportion of high CVD risk was approximately 7.1 percent, meaning that among the male workers in small sized industries in Korea, about 7 percent of the population had a high risk of cardiovascular diseases in the next ten years. After adjusting the data for age, occupation type was identified as an important predictor of CVD, with bus or taxi drivers having greater vulnerability to CVD than average manufacturing workers. “This is largely because job of driving, in comparison to other workers in the manufacturing sectors, involves much less activity, and has less opportunity for break and exercise,” Hwang said. In order to alleviate CVD among drivers, Hwang mentioned that it is important to consciously conduct simple daily exercises and stretching during break time, to let the body move and facilitate blood flow.
another notable aspect found in accordance with this research was that young workers were more likely than old workers to have lifestyle risk factors, such as cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking. In other words, young workers in the ages of 30s and 40s had a less healthy lifestyle than more aged workers, in terms of exercising, smoking, and drinking. Therefore, the study leads to a conclusion that work site health promotion programs should be required for young workers and drivers who are the most likely risk groups for the development of CVD, in order to control risk factors and lifestyle modification. “Also, average workers need to realize that CVD is a more common and serious threat that they think, and need to receive regular checkups at the hospital,” emphasized Hwang.
Hwang emphasized the betterment of the health of people as her most important research philosophy. “My ultimate goal of research is to prevent potential diseases and contribute to a healthier society. I also aim to make an evidence-based nursing knowledge that can be directly applied to nursing jobs,” concluded Hwang.