The purpose of this study was to explore how older adults kept their health good at a doctorless farm village.

Data was collected through in-depth interviews with 32 participants who were over 65 years old and analyzed in terms of Strauss and Corbin`s (1990) grounded theory methodology.

The Core Category of health care of older adults was identified as “enduring physical changes by themselves”. The process of this could be divided into 4 stages : the stage of bearing, the stage of managing daily living activities, the stage of passively collecting information and the stage of minimally utilizing health care services. Older adults accepted the aging process positively but health sources limitation passively, so they managed daily living activities and used natural food for health. In addition, they collected information related to health care and used health care services minimally.

We found that participants managed their health passively because of negative attitudes toward active health behaviors of older adults by themselves and the difficulty of access to health care services. Therefore, various community health services for older adults need to be developed to empower older adults in the community.

This study was to investigate the factors influencing quality of life of middle-aged women in rural area, to provide the basic data for health promoting intervention in order to improve quality of life.

The subjects were 469 middle-aged women by 40-64 from 7 rural areas in Gyeonggi-do, Jeolla-do and Gyeongsang-do. Data collection was conducted by using 6 questionnaires.

There were significant differences in the quality of life by age, educational level, marital status, religion, family pattern, and economic level. There were positive relationships between quality of life and health perception, social support, and negative relationships between quality of life and depression and stress. Stepwise Multiple Regression Analysis for quality of life revealed that the most powerful predictor was depression. Depression, health perception, social support, stress and economic level explained 51.5% of the variance.

Depression, health perception, social support, stress and economic level were related with quality of life of middle-aged women in rural area. Therefore, it is necessary to develop the nursing intervention these psycho-social aspects to increase the quality of life.

This study was done to compare health risk behavior prevalence for youth living in metropolitan, medium sized and small cities or rural area, in order to enhance understanding regional differences.

For this study, data from the 2006 Youth Health Risk Behavior Online Survey collected by the Korean Center for Disease Control were analyzed using SPSS.

In the metropolitan areas, prevalence for disease and perceived obesity were higher than in other areas. Lack of intense or moderate physical activity, obesity, fast food intake, and insufficient sleep showed higher prevalence than in rural areas. Prevalence of lifetime smoking, lifetime alcohol consumption, present alcohol use, fruit intake less than once a day, and not wearing a seat belt were higher in rural areas than in urban areas. Gender, smoking, and alcohol use were correlated. Spearman correlation between living with parent and skipping breakfast were significant. Smoking, alcohol use, and sexual behavior were correlated.

As significant differences in prevalence of youth health risk behaviors exist between regional areas, health education and health promotion programs considering these differences have to be developed and implemented for adolescents. Programs for prevention of smoking and alcohol use, programs for improvement of fruit intake and safety are suggested for adolescents in rural areas, whereas programs to enhance physical activity and obesity management are suggested for adolescents in metropolitan areas.