Health ministry opens forum on data-driven health policy

The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Health Promotion Institute held the first Future Health Strategy Forum at the El Tower in Yangjae, Seoul, on Wednesday under the theme "Everyone's Health, Designed on Evidence," the ministry said.

Healthy life expectancy, the years a person can expect to live in good health, fell 1.3 years to 68.6 in 2023 from a year earlier, said Lee Don-hyung, head of the institute's health promotion research center, who presented on how the measure is calculated and managed. The figure rose to 70.9 in 2020 before declining for three consecutive years, which the presentation described as requiring a policy response.

Oh Kyung-won, head of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency's health and nutrition survey analysis division, described how large-scale surveys — the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which has covered 10,000 people since 1998, and the Community Health Survey, which has covered 230,000 people since 2008 — are used to track public health behavior and health levels.

Shin Jung-woo, head of the medical workforce supply estimation center at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, presented international comparisons drawn from OECD health statistics and projected that if current trends continue, health risks such as overweight and obesity will grow by 2032 and the share of current health spending in GDP will rise steeply past the OECD average into the mid-teens percent range. Kim Jae-yong, head of the National Health Insurance Service's big data operations office, presented on what roughly 609 billion health insurance records show about health and medical use and their potential policy applications.

A panel discussion chaired by Yoon Suk-joon, a professor of preventive medicine at Korea University's College of Medicine, followed, with academics and journalists examining the limits and constraints on applying health data and statistics to policy and the tasks that need concentrated investment.

"As the environment surrounding people's lives and health changes rapidly, the tasks health policy must address are also becoming more complex and diverse," said Sohn Young-rae, director of the health ministry's regional essential public health care division. "Through the four forums, we will identify the core tasks health policy should focus on and, based on that, prepare effective measures to realize 'everyone's health.'"

Kim Hun-joo, president of the Korea Health Promotion Institute, said the data and statistics underpinning health policy — healthy life expectancy, various health surveys, international health statistics and health insurance data — have been steadily accumulating. "The important task now is to use and connect each of them more effectively, and I hope this forum becomes an opportunity to advance evidence-based health policy a step further," he said.

The forum series, held since 2021 as a public venue for experts and citizens to discuss health policy issues, continues through December, taking up health disparities in October, gaps in health policy in November and new health risks facing future generations in December. The public can attend in person through advance registration or watch the live stream on the institute's official YouTube channel.