Original Article

The Occupational Health Communication in Workplace by the Support of the Government-Funded Subsidized Occupational Health Program for Small-Scale Enterprises

Kyung-Hee Jungchoi, Hye-Sook Park, Jeong-Youn Kim, Kyung Yong Rhee1, Seong-Min Hyeon2, Ji-Young Oh1, Soo-Keun Kim3, Hyun-Joo Kim4, Eun-Hee Ha
Author Information & Copyright
Department of Preventive Medicine, College of Medicine, Ewha Womans University and Ewha Womans Medical Research Institute, Korea.
1Korea Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute, Korea.
2Media Research, Korea.
3Radiation Health Research Institute, Korea.
4Department of Preventive Medicine, College of Medicine Dankook University, Korea.

Copyright ⓒ 2003. Ewha Womans University School of Medicine. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Jun 30, 2003

Abstract

Objectives

This study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the government-funded subsidized occupational health program for small-scale enterprises(GSOHP_SSE) by occupational health communication in workplace.

Methods

We sampled the 1,835 enterprises of study by proportional stratified random sampling among industries of supported and not supported by GSOHP_SSE in Seoul, Ansan, Daejeon, Kwangjoo and Pohang. Information on the general characteristics of enterprises and respondants and occupational health communication in the workplace was collected on self-reported questionnaires by post-survey between December 6 and 15 in 2001. We received answers from 463 enterprises and analyzed 228 enterprises through data-cleaning by logistic regression to evaluate effectiveness of GSOHP-SSE about occupational health communication in the workplace.

Results

By multiple logistic regression analysis, GSOHP_SSE turned out not to be statistically significant factor in all dependent variables about occupational health communication in the workplace. The concern of owner(odds ratio (below OR) ; 1.63, 95% confidence interval(below 95% CI) ; 0.38-7.01), formation(OR ; 3.67, 95% CI ; 1.00-13.44) and empowerment(OR ; 1.48, 95% CI ; 0.25-8.91) of health manager, request about occupational health problem of health manager(OR ;4.48, 95% CI ; 0.97-20.57) and occupational health communication of owner (OR ; 3.07, 95% CI ; 0.81-11.71) had the trend increasing OR in the industries supported GSOHP_SSE relative to the industries not supported. But in recognition of possibility on occupational health communication of laborers, OR of GSOHP_SSE was decreased in 0.53(95% CI ; 0.11-2.44).

Conclusions

This study found that the GSOHP_SSE was some effective to the side of employer and health manager, but had a limitation about change of communication culture useful to the laborers. We suggested the laborer-centered health training programs or the empowerment-based health training programs for effective occupational health management in the workplace.

Keywords: Occupational health communication; The government-funded subsidezed occupational health program for small-scale enterprises; Small-scale enterprises