Making evidences for health promotion in the fields of health evaluation and promotion

Abstract

 Recent increase in the number of epidemiological reports from Japan means the progress in the epidemiological research among Japanese. Now, both large number of participants and quality of data are expected in conducting a new epidemiological study. It is becoming more valuable selection for Japanese researchers to develop a collaborative framework with corporations for health check-ups.
 In the fields of health evaluation and promotion, various kinds of data, such as cancer screening, lung function as well as traditional cardiovascular risk factors have been accumulated. We propose 3 major frames to make epidemiological evidence utilizing these backgrounds.
 The first is to report basic characteristics of participants in periodical health check-ups through collecting data from all over Japan by utilizing quality control programs of the society. The second is to make a new project consisting with newly designed questionnaires and measuring new items in addition to health check-ups under quality control. The third is to design a prospective study to find risk factor for lifestyle related diseases only detectable by periodical health check-ups (hypertension, diabetes, gouts and so on). When we treat a data-set of health check-up of a year as a baseline survey, subsequent yearly health check-ups would be used as follow up study to detect incidence of hypertension.
 We have been conducting annual health check-up in all over Japan, and provide chances to improve lifestyles of participants. Unfortunately, we have not been fully utilizing these frames to establish epidemiological evidences. It is important for corporations for health check-ups to make a new evidence for health promotion under the quality control programs of the society.