Abstract
Effective care prevention measures are needed because of the aging of society and the increasing numbers of aged people requiring care. Some means of visualizing community status factors related to care needs is important for the development of such measures. As part of such efforts, the aim of this study was to develop a set of care prevention indices. We first created a framework for the indices and listed candidate indices. After identifying good index criteria, we selected core and recommended indices from among the candidates. Then, we examined suitable methods to deal with confounders. Lastly, we used the developed set of indices to assess 31 municipalities in Japan. The result of this study was the development of a framework that consisted of five elements and two aspects and that considered the Urban HEART (Health Equity Assessment and Response Tool) framework developed by the World Health Organization. We listed 249 candidate indices using the developed framework. The good index criteria were identified as precision, representativeness of contents, acceptability by society, academic importance, modifiability, and usability of data. To address confounding, we basically adopted a stratification method because it is a method that is easy for municipality officers to understand. Finally, 22 core indices and 18 recommended indices were selected and were used to assess the municipalities. In the future, we can use this assessment tool to identify priority areas to be covered in care prevention measures.
