Social Capital and Population Approach

Abstract

Social capital is a feature of social organizations such as networks, norms, and social trust, and is important for health promotion. Life expectancy and standard mortality ratios of selected causes of death have a significant association with cohesion or autonomy by municipality in Japan. It would be useful to understand Japanese cultural key concepts related to social capital such as en, yui, or jichi-kai. Nonprofessional disaster volunteer activities are also one of the unique features of social capital in Japan. The population approach is an effort to reduce risk for the entire population. It can be categorized as (1) social, (2) physical, and (3) informational environment building. My study has revealed that municipalities with health committee activity had significantly higher participation and detection ratios for cancer screening. Tobacco tax as well as fat, soda, and snack taxes have been introduced as powerful population approaches. Finally, I would like to propose an international tax to obtain revenue for health promotion world-wide.