Health Promotion Activity and Outcomes in the Community

Abstract

Alongside socioeconomic development and human empowerment, the Japanese disease pattern has been changed to the lifestyle-related diseases from infectious disease. Japanese life expectancy has progressed from the lowest to the highest among industrialized countries. To make Japan in the twenty-first century a healthy society equipped to enable all people to live a healthier and happier life, in response to these emerging health issues the Japanese Government has proposed a program for National Health Promotion in the twenty-first Century ({''}Healthy Japan 21{''}), which contains objectives to be achieved by the year 2010. The purpose of this chapter is to make clear the effectiveness and the relevant factors of Health Promotion programs for the people in the town of Soyo, Kumamoto Prefecture. The main quantitative effects were a decrease the in premature death rate, from 22.1% in 1988 to 15.6% in 1998, and an increase in subjective health from 48.0 to 71.5%. Health Promotion factors arising from this study include that people should be given greater opportunity to participate actively in the design of health care services and the process of their planning system, and practitioners and policy makers should continue the search for community-based programs that improve the quality of life for the elderly in Japan.