社会関係資本による健康なまちづくりのプロジェクト構築に関する検討

―国際協力機構・東北ブラジル健康なまちづくりプロジェクトの事例から―

抄録

A basic concept of Health Promotion is that health can be influenced and formed by diverse determinants existing in life. The activities of the "Healthy Municipality" project, in which Health Promotion is actualized in the local municipality setting, encourage people to control such determinants and improve health through collective actions. Currently, a considerable amount of research findings have indicated that collective actions may be established with a greater degree of ease in communities with well-accumulated social factors, such as institutions, networks, social mechanisms, trust, and norm. These social factors are known as "Social Capital". Thus, a "Healthy Municipality" project, which requires collective actions, can be designed through the introduction of the concept of Social Capital. The present article reviews basic knowledge on Social Capital, and demonstrates, as an example being developed with the concept, the Healthy Municipalities Project that has been implemented in the poor rural sociies in the northeast Brazil.