Strengthening Community Health in Japan

This week-long course will provide Japanese healthcare professionals with concentrated time and space to review Japan’s health system and services, as well as their own work, from an international perspective. While acknowledging the success of Japan’s transition to universal health care, participants will also then discuss ways of improvement individual and system wide. How can the current system and services be strengthened? What are the strategies for the future? What are the lessons learned from disasters and pandemics? What are the future roles of health professionals, including public health nurses, nutritionists, and many others?

This course is co-organized by the International Health Systems Program and the Takemi Program in International Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, with support from the Japan Medical Association and Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Fukushima Medical University, Takeda Healthcare Foundation, Mitsubishi Corporation (Digital Innovation Center), and Health and Global Policy Institute.

.

• Review the Japanese health care system and services from an international perspective
• Review your own community work (in Japan or related to Japan) and identify issues that need to be addressed
• Learn about different international approaches to community health
• Discuss and plan ways to improve your own work in a local community

The curriculum of the course includes the following:

• Health system thinking
• Health system evaluation
• Health literacy
• Community engagement
• Social determinants of health
• Leadership
• Health service designing

This course is designed primarily Japanese healthcare professionals. English reading and writing skills are required. All lectures will be translated into Japanese, but not all course materials will be in Japanese.

We welcome participants who are…

• Working or interested in Japanese health systems and services (nurses, nutritionists, doctors, health institute administrators, etc.)
• With technical skills relevant to community health
• With experience in designing, implementing, and evaluating community health programs

We encourage participation by teams of participants who can work together in the course to develop draft strategic plans for their own organizations.

This interactive, course offers a blend of theory and practice, geared to an audience focused on implementation. Included throughout the course are lectures, Q&A time, group work, case studies, problem sets, and preparation of group and individual case presentations. Facilitated discussion among participants is expected throughout the course. Participants are encouraged to have on hand their own work material and resources on community health.

There will be an online preparation session which all participants are required to attend. In addition, participants are required to prepare short presentation of your work in the community (no more than 5 slides in Japanese with English translation) prior to arrival in Boston.

The expected outcome is a group presentation to share what you have learned during the course and ways to improve your community work. Successful participants will receive a certificate of completion.

Dr. Aya Goto is Taro Takemi Professor of the Practice of International Community Health at Department of Global Health and Population and the Director of Takemi Program in Internation Health. She also holds a position as a Specially Appointed Professor at the Center for Integrated Sciences and Humanities of Fukushima Medical University in Japan. Her translational research has been conducted in close collaboration with local communities in Fukushima, Japan and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and is combined with the capacity building of local health care professionals in health information as well as maternal and child health care. Since the Fukushima nuclear accident, Dr. Goto has been working closely with local public health nurses helping them respond appropriately to concerns among parents of small children about elevated background radiation. Recently, she started working with children in disaster-prone Asian and African countries toward health promotion and community development. She earned her MD and PhD from Yamagata University, Japan, and her MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Diana Bowser has her primary academic appointment at Boston College as the Associate Dean for Research and Integrated Science at the Connell School of Nursing and is an adjunct associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where she is the Course Director for Global Executive Courses within the International Health Systems Program. She has 20 years of experience in health system analysis related to health economics, health policy, and using econometric methods to evaluate health system changes in Latin America, Africa, and the United States. She has collaborated with Dr. Bossert on both research and training programs about decentralization. She has provided technical assistance and conducted research with funding from USAID, DFID, WHO, the Global Fund, Save the Children, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, IADB, NIH, and the World Bank. She has worked closely with the following governments on these policy issues: Nigeria, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana, Namibia, Swaziland, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Ukraine, Kosovo, Bangladesh, and Malaysia.