Department of Family Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
J Community Health. 2010 Apr;35(2):156-64. doi: 10.1007/s10900-009-9213-1.
Korean Americans experience many challenges to obtaining adequate health care coverage and access to needed services. Because a large proportion of Korean Americans attend churches on a regular basis, churches may be a promising venue where health programs can be delivered. In order to gain an in-depth understanding of Korean American churches with respect to conducting future health intervention research, we conducted exploratory interviews and focus groups with 58 leaders from 23 Korean American churches and three community organizations. From these interviews and focus groups, we found that Korean churches and church leaders seek to meet a variety of social and health needs of their congregation and their surrounding community. Several leaders have stated that assisting with social and medical needs of their members is an important component of their current ministry. They described profound health needs of their congregations and have suggested various ways in which the university can partner with the local churches to help address these needs through research. Additionally, they described various resources churches can provide to researchers such as: their personal assistance, church volunteer base, church facility, and church network and contacts. Our findings suggest that Korean churches have a high potential to serve an important role in the health of Korean Americans. On the basis of the promising results of the present study, we are planning to conduct a cross sectional survey of Korean church leaders and members in Los Angeles County to substantiate our findings in a larger representative sample.
美籍韩裔在获得足够的医疗保健覆盖和获得所需服务方面面临许多挑战。由于很大一部分美籍韩裔经常去教堂，教堂可能是一个提供健康计划的有希望的场所。为了深入了解美籍韩裔教会在未来进行健康干预研究方面的情况，我们对 23 个美籍韩裔教会和三个社区组织的 58 名领导人进行了探索性访谈和焦点小组讨论。从这些访谈和焦点小组中，我们发现，韩国教会和教会领袖试图满足会众及其周围社区的各种社会和健康需求。一些领导人表示，帮助满足其成员的社会和医疗需求是他们当前事工的一个重要组成部分。他们描述了会众的深刻健康需求，并提出了大学可以通过研究与当地教会合作来帮助解决这些需求的各种方法。此外，他们还描述了教会可以为研究人员提供的各种资源，如：个人援助、教会志愿者基础、教会设施以及教会网络和联系人。我们的研究结果表明，韩国教会有很大的潜力在美籍韩裔的健康中发挥重要作用。基于本研究的有希望的结果，我们计划在洛杉矶县对韩国教会领袖和成员进行横断面调查，以在更大的代表性样本中证实我们的发现。
