Prevalence of Chronic Diseases, Status of Health Behaviors and Medical Service Utilization among Female Workers

Background:

Despite the increasing number of female participation in employment, blue-collar women have been exposed to higher health risk. This study is to describe the prevalence of chronic diseases, health behaviors, and medical service utilization of female blue-collar workers.

Methods:

Data were derived from the 2001 Korea National Health and Nutrition Survey (KNHANES). The sample was made up of 37,108 male and female participants aged 20 or over selected nation-wide by probability sampling from Korea. This study applied the logistic regression for nominal variables such as disease prevalence and health behaviors and with the regression for continuos variables such as the length and costs of medical services.

Results:

In general, women's prevalence of chronic illness and uncured rate were significantly higher than male, and especially female blue-collar workers had the highest prevalence, uncured rate, unhealthy status, and perceived stress. However, the medical care cost was the lowest in female blue-collar workers.

Conclusions:

The findings suggest that female blue-collar workers were more likely to experience health problems, and that despite the highest health risk, health service is not effectively utilized, and health policy maker should take consider of special status of female blue collar workers who are in health inequality.