This study examined the “Community Environment” that should be emphasized in order to maintain the “activity” that supports the “A sense of Purpose in Life” of the elderly and leads to the appropriate use of medical services. A questionnaire survey on “Usual Activities”, “Community Environment”, “Actual Use of Medical Services”, and “Purpose in Life” were conducted for people aged 60 or older (n=1,250) who live in Aichi Prefecture. As a result, “there are no benches or other resting places”, “public transportation is not well maintained”, “there are few hospitals”, and “lack of parks for walking/exercise” had an impact on different types of activities of elderly people, and most of them showed that the activities decreased significantly as the number of the facilities decreased. Moreover, it was shown that most of the activities were strongly related to the sense of purpose in life of elderly, but have little relation to the actual usage of medical services.

In this paper, we surveyed Mabi town, part of Kurashiki city, which was affected by a flood disaster in 2018. Our survey is a comparison between persons with disabilities who died and persons with disabilities who were helped. In addition, we surveyed the support of welfare professionals and the support of residents. We discovered that persons who needed to be protected during the disaster could not take refuge on the second floor of their houses and neighboring houses without outside support. Furthermore, we found that no person could escape the disaster by them self. It is essential to have a relationship with neighbors (mutual-support) and cognition of the disaster risk (self-support) in order to leave no one behind. The individual evacuation plan (publicsupport) must motivates further work on self-support and mutual-support.

A street survey was conducted on 403 elderly people with the aim of clarifying the situation of toilets when going-out to examine issues and conditions of easy-to-use. It was shown that about 60% of the subjects were anxious about the toilet when going out, and as they got older, the frequency of using the toilet increased and the concern about the toilet tended to increase. In addition, the conditions for easy use of toilets for the elderly women are “less waiting time (not crowded)”,“clean”, “handrails have been installed”, “easy to flush”, “luggage rack and luggage hook”. In conclusion, preparing toilets and the surroundings to meet the needs of the elderly are important factors in creating environments for the elderly for going-out.