<Preface>

Recent topics in public health in Japan
Tetsuji Yokoyama1), Shinji Takemura2)
1)
2)

Department of Health Promotion, National Institute of Public Health
Department of Health Policy and Technology Assessment, National Institute of Public Health

The “Journal of the National Institute of Public Health” is published 6 times a year to promptly cover
up-to-date topics in the field of public health; including health, health care, social care and environmental
health, and to transmit evidence-based accurate knowledge and information to healthcare professionals.
Although the journal mainly targets the readers in Japan, previous feature articles have been utilized in thebroad field of public health nationwide and this motivated us to publish a special feature issue to disseminate
the information about the Japanese public health to countries all over the world.
This feature issue “Recent topics in public health in Japan” covers various topics rather than a specificdetailed one because the information accessible from other countries is very limited especially in the fieldof public health despite the attracting interest in Japan or Japanese public health from many countries
around the world. Thus, this issue is a collection of the following 7 review articles dealing with Japan’s
advanced efforts of public health, to which the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) has substantiallycontributed.
Osawa, et al. describe a summary of past maternal and child health policies and an overview of thematernal and child health policy since 2001, especially focusing on the first and second terms of Healthy
Parents and Children 21—Japan’s maternal and child health policy. Miura and Tano review the current
situation of geriatric oral health care and countermeasures against oral frailty as a new concern ingeriatric oral health in Japan. Bando, Inaba, and Yunokawa review the present conditions, challenges
and countermeasures on environmental health for the Tokyo Olympic Games and Paralympic Games in
2020, focusing on passive smoking measures, securing food safety and supervising the private lodging
business. Fukuda and Shiroiwa describe the current situation of the application of economic evaluation ofpharmaceuticals and medical devices in Japan, and introduce “Center for Outcomes Research and Economic
Evaluation for Health (CORE2-Health)” established in the NIPH to provide good evidence on costeffectiveness. Masui, et al. summarize the current status and issues concerning long-term care policies,
and introduce the Comprehensive Service for Preventive Care and Daily Life Support for developing
diverse care services provided by local citizens and promoting mutual aid in local communities, with the key
concepts of “public participation” and “local resources.” Takemura and Sone outline the history of researchand development (R&D) for intractable & rare diseases in Japan, and describe how the NIPH has been
involved in and contributed to R&D and how the NIPH will address it. Taneda describes some of the recentactivities including the new reporting system of death cases due to medical accidents, the reform of patient
safety management at advanced treatment hospitals.
We hope that the information reviewed in this issue will help public health workers in the world tounderstand that Japanese health policies and related efforts by NIPH have played important roles in
improving the nation’s health, and to find that the Japan’s experience will be useful for the improvement ofpublic health in their own countries.

J. Natl. Inst. Public Health, 68 (1) : 20191