Community Organization and People Participation in Community Health

Abstract

There are following three main reasons why the authors are interested in the subject of the present paper : (1) The voluntary (non-professional) health activities of community organization type, sometimes called“People's Organized Self-Help Activities for Health” in Japanese, which had embarked around 1952, partially influenced by an idea of community organization in the U.S.A., on the fly and mosquito control at the beginning and later on various other health problems, have been becoming less and less active since around 1965, because of the changing health problems as well as the changing socio-economic conditions in Japan such as symbolized by the“community disorganization”owing to industrialization and urbanization. (2) On the other hand, what is called“people's movement”has become active against the environmental pollution and other health problems, and which has contributed to the recent emphasis of“people (or citizen) participation”in various community projects at political and public administrative levels. Many governors and mayors seem to be interested in emphasizing people participation, often for their political purpose, but not necessarily knowing its deep philosophy nor its practical methodologies to ensure participation of as many people as possible in a community, particularly for the betterment of health. (3) Mainly because of changing health problems and medical, technical advancement, a new idea about community health or community medicine has developed in the past several years. Based upon chiefly the findings from a series of studies on research in community organization carried out jointly by the authors and other social scientists, as well as areview of literature on the community health/medicine and on the people participation, discussions were made in the present paper. The main points of the conclusions, which are only to present one type of the tools for planning for health to obtain participation of as many people (actually families) as possible in a community, are as follows : (The word"community"here is used in terms of the local autonomy body such as city.) 1. Community organization as defined by the findings from the research (that is, characterized by problem solving as its direct aim: people participation in community activities, particularly in planning: co-operation among people: utilization of social resources: and coordination among programmes and agencies) will become more and more important in Japan. 2. The neighbourhood organization or a similar type of organization, consisting of house holds or families (and not individuals as such) in a local (smaller) community, will play a major role and will be an important basis for future community organization in Japan. 3. The people's direct or indirect participation in planning community health programmes in a local community and also in larger communities will play a very important role in promoting community health on a democratic basis in Japan. 4. Through above-mentioned social machinery the betterment of community health will be attained together with the efforts from tax supported, governmental agencies as well as professional organizations such as local medical association.