Considerable efforts have been made to prevent and manage hypertension and diabetes, but the prevalence of these diseases has not changed significantly over the past 10 years. Hypertension and diabetes are chronic conditions requiring continuous treatment and management. Controlling blood pressure and blood sugar levels can prevent life-threatening complications and a deterioration in the quality of life. Community-centered primary health care is characterized by inclusiveness and continuous contact. Well-established primary health care services can reduce the number of unnecessary emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and medical tests, and therefore minimize unnecessary medical expenses. However, the number of patients treated for mild chronic diseases at large hospitals has increased, with a concomitant decrease in the proportion of outpatient clinic visits (41.6% in 2007 vs. 37.8% in 2016). Thus, there is a clear need to strengthen primary health care, including for the treatment of chronic diseases. To establish a chronic diseases management system based on local clinics, the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Korea launched a pilot chronic diseases management program aimed at increasing patient acceptance of local primary health care. The program was implemented in 2014, 2016, and 2019. This review examines the short-term impact of the pilot program with respect to the prevention and management of hypertension and diabetes.

(1) Objective: This study examined the incidence and risk factors contributing to the progression to diabetes mellitus (DM) in a seven-year follow-up study of non-diabetic National Health Examinees. (2) Methods: For this retrospective observational cohort study, we used two national representative databases: the National Health Screening (HEALS) database 2009 and the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) database 2009–2015. The eligible subjects without DM with blood sugar levels of <126 mg/dL were selected using the HEALS database. The subsequent follow-up and clinical outcomes were evaluated using the NHIS database. Cox proportional hazard regression was applied to examine the effects of the covariates on progression to diabetes. (3) Results: Among those who took part in the national health screening in 2009, 4,205,006 subjects who met the eligibility criteria were selected. Of these, 587,015 were diagnosed with DM during the follow-up by 2015. The incidence of progression from non-diabetes to DM was 14.0%, whereas that from impaired fasting glucose (IFG) to DM was 21.9%. Compared to the normal group, the newly diagnosed DM group was more likely to comprise older, female, currently smoking, and high-risk drinking participants and participants with IFG, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and metabolic syndrome. (4) Conclusions: This epidemiological study in the Republic of Korea found risk factors similar to those of other studies, but the incidence of progression to DM was 22.8 per 1000 person-years, which is higher than that previously reported. Hence, more care is needed to prevent DM.

This retrospective cohort study was done to investigate the incidence of hypertension and its relation to the fasting blood glucose level in Korea. The eligible non-hypertensive subjects (n = 3,396,187) among the National Health Insurance Service-National Health Screening (NHIS-HEALS) examinees (n = 10,644,911) in 2009 were followed up until 2015. A Cox proportional hazards regression was used to estimate the risk of the high blood glucose level for the incident hypertension while controlling for covariates’ confounding effect. The cumulative incidence rate was 10.6% for seven years (11.6% in men and 8.3% in women). The incidence density was 1474.8 per 100,000 person-years. High fasting blood glucose (adjusted Hazard Ratio (aHR), 1.836; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.810 to 1.862), prediabetes (aHR, 1.249; 95% CI, 1.237 to 1.260), a history of diabetes mellitus (aHR, 1.635; 95% CI, 1.605 to 1.666), high triglyceride (aHR, 1.292; 95% CI, 1.280 to 1.303), a history of dyslipidemia (aHR, 1.279; 95% CI, 1.253 to 1.305) and prehypertension group (aHR, 1.964; 95% CI, 1.948 to 1.979) were significantly related to the incident hypertension after adjusting for covariates. Among real-world data in Korea, high blood glucose level was the independent risk factor for developing hypertension.

Background: South Korea is well-known as one of top countries for plastic surgeries. However, there was no other trustworthy source of the number of plastic/cosmetic surgeries in Korea except the survey results from International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery which was based on estimation. The emergence of social media is providing to researchers and public health officials an alternative opportunity to study health-related issues in real-time and extensive scope. Objective: This paper introduced current issues and trend of cosmetic procedures/surgeries in Korea using social media analysis. We aimed to contribute to the analysis of the data, as well as presenting a quantitative interdisciplinary approach to analyze such open source data in the context of health issues. Methods: We collected tweets referring to cosmetic procedures/surgeries from January 2012 to July 2013. After excluding spams, advertisements by hospitals, and retweets, 464,227 tweets were analyzed to capture the trend of tweets including change with seasons and months. Results: During 19 months, the interest in cosmetic procedures/surgeries was highest in January 2013, but lowest in April-May in both 2012 and 2013. Regarding seasons, the interest in cosmetic procedures/surgeries was highest in winter followed by autumn, summer, and spring. The body parts with the highest interest was eyes (60.5%) followed by nose (15.4%), jaw (14.5%), skin (15.9%), and hair (2.6%). Conclusion: We utilized the social medial analysis with atypical big data of tweets to assess current state and trend of cosmetic procedures/surgeries in which the public is very much interested. As there was no existing official statistics of cosmetic procedures/surgeries in Korea, it was not possible to compare the results with any other sources, but we could report how much the public was interested in cosmetic procedures/surgeries and how it has changes during 19 month-period. It would suggest the possibility that social media analysis would assess public interest and opinions especially in public health problems in which there was no previous information.