Development of Evaluation Criteria and Certification Standards for Organic Maternity Care Center

With the increasing awareness of health and environmental preservation, consumers turn their attention to organic and eco-friendly products. The increased service industry incurred partly by sophistication of industrial structure has resulted in having the service industry subject to environmental certification in a bid to promote sustainable production and consumption, which has contributed to reducing environment loads and energy costs as well as the amount of wastes. The gradually increasing maternity care centers have elevated environment loads and caused a variety of diseases due to a lack of health control and improper treatment of chemical substances. Against this backdrop, this study aims to develop evaluation criteria for an official certification of organic maternity care centers and to present the basic operational proposals through a comparative analysis of organic and eco-friendly industrial certification programs. Due to the absence of studies on certification programs for organic maternity care centers, this study has conducted a comparative analysis of overseas certifications, including Organic SPA, GRA, and Nordic Swan, and domestic eco-friendly hotel service certification standards. The evaluation areas have been classified into 19 or less categories, including 19 items for Organic SPA, 8 items for GRA, 7 items for Nordic Swan and 7 items for eco-friendly hotel service certification, and common evaluation areas have been grouped into categories and health control and education management that are considered important in maternity care centers have been incorporated into evaluation areas, which has eventually produced six different categories. When it comes to selecting evaluation indicators for different categories, what are neither used in nor applicable to maternity care centers have been excluded and similar items have been combined and eventually 41 preliminary evaluation indicators have been selected following in-depth interviews with relevant professionals. Further researches into developing the evaluation system to properly evaluate and certify organic maternity care centers through in-depth interviews and surveys among operators of maternity care centers and relevant professionals will be appreciated.