Building community-based integrated care networks

Matsudo-city's practice for community building by multi-actors cooperation networks

Abstract

In the era of rapid aging and the following changes in the social structure in Japan, health and social services professionals need to develop networks that flexibly reflect particular situations of each locality including the number of elderly people and the health care delivery arrangements. In other words, this is the system that is currently encouraged at the national level, enabling various services including health, social, and welfare to be provided appropriately in order to support the daily life of elderly individuals in their home/community settings (community-based care system). In this report, I will illustrate the actual process of the network building towards integration of health and social care at the local level by explaining the experiences from my initiatives in the city of Matsudo, where I belong to the medical association. Regarding the network building, I emphasized the importance of health and social care in todayʼs clinical practices, especially in the form of horizontal integration. Furthermore, sharing and uniting norms among various professionals and residents in the locality is essential for the integration ("normative integration"). Based on the experiences and findings from the initiatives, including that mentioned above, it is expected that communities will be built using multi-actor cooperation networks to support individuals, their families, and the locality on the basis of a local government, health professionals, and the residents.