By Ian Werther in News — 19 Mar 2026

Daegu signs agreement to expand community-based care training

A South Korean college and two city agencies in Daegu signed an agreement to boost training for the country’s emerging model of community-based care. Daegu Health College and the L-Life Industry Support Center joined Daegu City Happiness Promotion Social Service Institute in a formal pact aimed at strengthening education and collaboration for integrated local care.

The signing ceremony in Daegu involved Daegu Health College leaders, including Kim Young-jun, the executive vice president for general affairs, and Kim Young-geun, the executive vice president for administration, along with Daegu City officials and the institute’s leadership. The event underscored a joint commitment to prepare the local care workforce ahead of a new nationwide framework.

Volunteers assemble holiday care packages for unaccompanied Airmen in dorms at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, Dec. 8, 2025. Thanks to widespread community support, packages were delivered to Airmen at Osan, Kunsan, Suwon, Camp Humphreys, Gwangju and Daegu. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Tallon Bratton) — Representative image for context; not directly related to the specific event in this article. License: Public domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Under the agreement, the two institutions will run professional education programs for a range of care providers. The target audience includes frontline care workers, supervisors, and individual caregivers who support community-based services. The training is designed to be practical and field-oriented, leveraging the strengths of both Daegu Health College and the L-Life Center.

The programs are slated to unfold in about 20 sessions. They will draw on the college’s health and welfare education capabilities, with facilities and faculty provided through the collaboration, to build competencies essential for integrated local care. The partners emphasize hands-on training that aligns with real-world needs in the community.

The collaboration aligns with Korea’s Act on Integrated Support for Local Care in Medical and Nursing Services, which takes effect later this month. The law seeks to formalize and expand regional networks for medical and long-term care, encouraging resource sharing among institutions to support a stable, community-based care system.

A patient is lying in a hospital bed in an intensive care unit of a hospital in Germany 2015. To the left is a hemodialysis machine, above the man is a monitor for heart rate and other parameters, to the right are apparatuses (infusion pumps) for administering medicine into the bloodstream. The standing person is a visitor. The orange sign says "Infektiös", which is German for "contagious". The persons on the picture were made unidentifiable by pixelization of the faces.The patient suffered from a very severe sepsis due to a prior surgery of the intestinal region for curing a less grave form of bowel cancer, from which he returned to his home too early, and after which grave spasms due to a food intolerance had led to a rupture in the region which had been treated during the surgery. This had induced multi-organ failure caused by a severe bacterial infection of the body between the hip region and the lungs, as the patient had returned to hospital only after two days during which he suffered from various symptoms. He had to have an emergency surgery. After subsequently spending two months in the intensive care unit and one further month in a specialized hospital department for kidney treatment, the patient had lost weight from 75 kg to less than 50 kg. He then left, fully recovered within weeks and is since then entirely well until present (2023), without any remains of the events other than the 20 cm long vertical operation scar on the chest. — Representative image for context; not directly related to the specific event in this article. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

For U.S. readers, the Daegu effort highlights how Korea is rebuilding its long-term care workforce around formal training, cross-institution cooperation, and local-service delivery. As the United States faces aging demographics and a growing demand for home- and community-based care, Korea’s model—linking higher education, public service bodies, and industry support—could offer a reference for workforce development, care standards, and regional collaboration across states.

Daegu, a major city in southeastern South Korea, serves as a testbed for implementing integrated care at the municipal level. The partnerships emphasize practical education, shared resources, and closer ties between government agencies and educational institutions—elements that could inform similar policy and workforce initiatives in other countries, including the United States.

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