Shigeru Tanaka, Administrative Director of JSHSS

The Japan Society of Health Support Science provides a forum to analyze the methods and outcomes of disease management and health support activities, as well as to conduct studies, produce periodic reports and provide a means for discussion of the development of a common foundation for these new services. For example, one priority is the establishment of standard indices to measure quality. Let me explain the use of the term “health support”. The main reason that we have used this term for our society’s name instead of the Japanese translation of the term “disease management” is because we are afraid that latter may present a somewhat biased image of out intent. The first word “disease”, may cause the reader to mistakenly believe that only medical personnel, such as doctors and nurses, are involved in our organization. It also implies “case management”, which refers to preventing the symptoms of individual patients from becoming more severe. Case management of the chronically ill is one of our study fields. But we also intend to provide support for healthy people and those who are considered “at-risk” for lifestyle-related chronic diseases based on the results of their most recent physical examination. (In Japan all company employees undergo annual checkups) Also, the use of the second word, “management”, like “guidance” in “health guidance”, may be considered somewhat disrespectful to our target populations’ individuality and spontaneity. Therefore, we have chosen to use “health support” for our name in reference to the term “self-reliance support”, which is the philosophy of Japan’s national long-term care insurance program. The academic methodologies used for our studies and reports are not limited to those of medicine, public health, healthcare science, nutrition, and health services research. Other disciplines such as marketing and psychology, which contribute towards the development of ways to interest our target populations in healthy behaviors, and to get them to actually improve and maintain healthy new behaviors, are important as well. Engineering, communication science and other disciplines that are the basis of developing tools to facilitate intervention and enhance the accuracy and speed of measurement are also relevant. Studying approaches from management science will help our discussions of this new field as a business. The application of economics will be required for thinking about the distribution of social resources. Tools from political science and will be useful in evaluating the progress of health, welfare and labor government administration related to health support. Our society plans to cooperate academically with all of these fields. The goal of this society is to make an active contribution to the development of health support services by reporting the achievements and results of studies to the public. We anticipate participation and contributions from people in various fields including academic researchers from universities and think tanks, but also: medical professionals such as doctors, public health nurses, clinical nurses and nutritionists; for-profit and non-profit organizations offering health support services such as medical check-ups; companies developing cutting-edge technologies that enable health support businesses; insurers including social insurance, national health insurance, long term care insurance bodies; life insurance companies; non-life insurance companies; as well as lawmakers and government officials.