Healthy City Kwachon 21 Project: a community health promotion programme in Korea.

Disease patterns of Koreans changed from infectious disease to non-infectious disease in the 1970's. Even though there has been a need for a health promotion programme, it was hard to find the programme in the community before 1985 in Korea. In 1985, the Public Health Promotion Law was enacted and the Korean government started to encourage local government to plan and conduct community health promotion programs. Healthy City Kwachon 21 (HCK21) is a health promotion programme for all residents in Kwachon, a city which has about 70,000 population and is located adjacent to Seoul, Korea. HCK21 launched in 1998 with three guiding principles: 1) programs should be accessible to all citizens; 2) Programmes should stimulate strong community participation and 3) Programmes should change environment and society. The long term goal of HCK21 is to increase the healthy life span of citizens in Kwachon. HCK21 is a collaborative project between Kwachon and the Institute for Health Promotion of the Graduate School of Health Science and Management, Yonsei University. It has seven components: 1) Publication of Monthly Health Newsletter; 2) Smoking Cessation and Tobacco Prevention Program; 3) Community Nutrition Program; 4) Maternal and Women's Health Programme; 5) Programme for Development of District Health Management Information System; 6) Hypertension Prevention and Control Programme and 7) Physical Activity Programme. HCK21 is now being implemented in the third year program since the program conducted in 1998 and 1999 was successful with received support from the citizens. It is recommended that HCK21 be a model for an integrated community-based health promotion programme in developing countries.