The recruited participants were clients of a self-sufficiency support center for sexually exploited women located in South Korea, recruited through snowball sampling after obtaining permission from the director of the support center.

A one-on-one program was conducted over six sessions, with each session ranging from 60 to 120 minutes. The caring program for health promotion included the following concepts: understanding the self; sharing traumatic events and negative emotions; re-framing the meaning of traumatic events; identifying thoughts and physical and emotional responses; developing health-promoting activities; and maintaining a positive attitude during the process of change .

PTS was measured using the PCL-5, which was developed by Weathers et al. (1993), revised by Weathers et al. (2013) as per the revised PTSD definition in the DSM-5, and translated into Korean by Kim et al. (2017). The Korean version of the PCL for the DSM-5 (PCL-5-K) contains 20 items, and each scored from 0 (not at all) to 4 (extremely). The score depended on the severity of the symptom caused by stress related to traumatic events during the past month. Possible scores ranged from 0 to 80, with a score of 37 or above indicating a PTSD diagnosis, and higher scores suggesting severe PTSD symptoms (Kim et al., 2017). Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the PCL-5-K was .97 among Korean veterans of the Vietnam War (Kim et al., 2017) and .89 in the current study.

Depression was assessed using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), developed by Radloff (1977), and translated into Korean by Chon and Rhee (1992). The Korean version of the CES-D contains 20 items rated on a 4-point Likert scale (0 = rarely or never; to 3 = all the time), according to how respondents felt during the past week. Possible scores ranged from 0 to 60, with a score of 16 or above indicating depressive symptoms, and higher scores indicating higher levels of depression (Radloff, 1977). Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the Korean CES-D was .89 among Korean adults (Chon & Rhee, 1992) and .78 in our study.

Health-promoting behaviors were measured using the Health Promoting Lifestyle Profile-II (HPLP-II), developed by Walker et al. (1995) and translated into Korean by Yun and Kim (1999). The Korean version of the HPLP-II comprises 52 items under six subscales: health responsibility (scores ranging from 9-36), physical activity (scores ranging from 8-32), nutrition (scores ranging from 9-36), spiritual growth (scores ranging from 9-36), interpersonal relations (scores ranging from 9-36), and stress management (scores ranging from 8-32). It was rated on a 4-point Likert scale (1=never, 2=sometimes, 3=often, 4=routinely). Possible scores ranged from 52 to 208, with higher scores indicating higher levels of health-promoting behaviors. Cronbach's alpha coefficients were .78, .87, .69, .77, .81, and .73 for health responsibility, physical activity, nutrition, spiritual growth, interpersonal relations, and stress management, respectively.