Abstract

In order to develop some indicies for the evaluation of village health worker's activities and to find out personal characteristics and other factors that affect the activities, an interview survey was conducted to thirty seven village health workers (VHW) in Sunwon, Naega and Bulun townships in Kangwha county, where the Community Health Project of Yonsei University, College of Medicine, has been implemented for the past ten years. In addition, daily activity records of the VHW's were also analyzed. The results are summarized below: First, meeting attendance rates, number of regular family visits, number of antenatal care visits and number of family planning visits were identified as the most meaningful criterion for the evaluation of the village health worker's activities. Second, personal factors that significantly affect the village health worker's activities were identified as age, educational background, living with in-laws, religion, presence of preschool child in the family, holding leader's position of village woman's association concurrently, and duration serving as a VHW. The more aged and the more educated VHWs were the more effective. Those VHWs who were living with in-laws, without preschool child in the family, holding the leader's position of the village woman's association, and the longer service duration were the more effective. Other factors that affect the VHW's activities were the number of households in the target village and the number of natural villages in the target villages. It showed that the smaller the size of number of households and natural villages, the higher the degrees of the effectiveness of the VHW.