Non-communicable diseases (NCD) including heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes are by far the leading causes of death worldwide. Multiple risk behaviors, such as tobacco use, alcohol drinking, physical inactivity, sedentary behavior, unhealthy diet and obesity have been identified as major contributors for NCD morbidity and mortality. As such, changing risk behaviors is of great clinical and public health importance. However, lack of the standardized classification system of behavior change technique (BCT) has prevented the researchers and the clinicians from identifying effective BCTs and reproducing behavior change interventions which were shown to be effective. In 2008, Abraham and Michie developed first prototype of BCT classification and it has evolved into Behavior Change Technique Taxonomy v1, which is based on international and disciplinary consensus. This paper aims to 1) summarize such recent trends in standardized reporting of BCT, 2) review applied research on meta-analysis of the relationship between BCT and behavior change, and 3) discuss what kind of efforts are required for developing behavior science curriculum in Japanese Medical Education.

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Globalization of medical education requires Japanese medical schools to restructure their education programs. Within the international standards of medical education, the Basic Medical Education WFME (World Federation for Medical Education) Global Standards for Quality Improvement and within its Japanese version published by the Japan Society of Medical Education, “Behavioural Science” appears as a bold heading. However, for many medical educators, “Behavioural Science/Medicine” is still an unfamiliar term. In consideration of this, the Japanese Society of Behavioural Medicine is preparing to publish the “Core Curriculum for Behavioural Medicine in Japanese Medical Education”. In this article, four medical education related documents, the Basic Medical Education WFME Global Standards, its Japanese version, the Scope of the Japanese National Examination for Medical Doctors, and the Model Core Curriculum for Medical Education in Japan, were reviewed from the viewpoint of “Behavioural Science/Medicine” to discuss the importance and direction of the upcoming “Core Curriculum for Behavioural Medicine in Japanese Medical Education”.

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The Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) has announced that, effective in 2023, physicians applying for ECFMG Certification will be required to graduate from a medical school that has been appropriately accredited. To satisfy this requirement, the physician’s medical school must be accredited through a formal process that uses criteria comparable to those established for U.S. medical schools by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education or that uses other globally accepted criteria, such as those put forth by the World Federation for Medical Education. In response to this announcement by ECFMG, we must grapple with the core-curriculum proposal of behavioral medicine which satisfy the items as follows: 1) the core-curriculum achieves the globally accepted criteria, 2) it also follows the international trends of behavioral science and medicine, and 3) it also includes the behavioral science and medicine established originally in Japan. To make the appropriate core-curriculum of behavioral medicine, we must define what behavioral science is. In this article, I proposed the framework of behavioral science and the role that Japanese Association of Behavioral Science (JABS) should achieve through the introduction of the history of JABS, the special fields of the JABS members, and the academic activities of JABS.

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Our society started in 1986 in connection with research and education of health behavior. This field has developed mainly in U.S. and Europe. However there is cultural differences between Japan and west. So, we have to develop our own way at that time.

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To investigate the required competency on behavioral science for graduates in medicine, a survey using the Delphi method was conducted. A working group under the auspices of Japanese Society of Behavioral Medicine developed a list of distinct competency which undergraduate medical students may need to master, and invited 111 society councilors to take part in an online Delphi exercise with two rounds. Recruitment was done by email and 26 participants completed the exercises. Seventeen were psychologists, five clinicians, two nurses and five had backgrounds in social medicine (there is some overlapping). Eight were active lecturers at a medical university and had teaching experience of 11 years on average. The items identified as 'can be explained' were; stress and coping, motivation, behavioral therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, user-medical staff relationship, inter-staff relationship, quality of life, social support, self-efficacy, stimulus control, relaxation method, adherence, taking medicine, active listening and inquiry method. The items identified as 'need to understand' were; automation of information processing, locus of control, teaching, social cognition, sexual behavior, and empowerment. Despite of the small sample size, the finding obtained from the experts of this region of science is useful to develop a core curriculum for behavioral medicine in Japanese undergraduate medical education.

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The present study aimed to demonstrate the association of workaholism and work engagement with recovery experiences among Japanese workers. A web-based survey was conducted in October 2010 among registered monitors of a survey company (Macromill, Inc). A total of 13,564 Japanese workers, who were matched in age, gender and resident area to Japanese representative sample, were randomly invited to the survey including workaholism, work engagement, recovery experiences, job characteristics, and demographics. The first 2,520 respondents were analyzed in this study (1,257 men and 1,263 women: mean age 44.4, SD = 12.9). Structural Equation Modeling was conducted to examine the association between workaholism, work engagement, and recovery experiences. Results show that workaholism and work engagement were weakly and positively related to each other. In addition, workaholism was negatively related to all four subscales of recovery experiences (i.e., psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control). In contrast, work engagement was positively related to three subscales of recovery experience (i.e., relaxation, mastery, and control). These findings suggest that workaholism may inhibit recovery experiences, whereas work engagement may enhance them. Although both workaholism and work engagement share the characteristic of spending much energy for one’s work, they are oppositely related to recovery experiences.

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Effective coping strategies for solving problems and dealing with emotions vary according to the situation. Therefore, it is important to modify coping behaviors according to each stressful situation. Previous studies have indicated that understanding the role of cognitive functions is an important factor in coping flexibility. Among cognitive functions, it is known that both metacognition, which means the ability to monitor the effectiveness of coping strategies when the stressful situation changes, and self-focused attention may affect the flexible use of coping strategies. In this cross-sectional study, we examined the effects of cognitive functions, focusing on the effect of metacognition and self-focused attention on coping flexibility in Japanese undergraduate students. Structural equation modeling indicated that the need to control thoughts had positive effects, and uncontrollability and danger had negative effects on coping flexibility. Moreover, coping flexibility had a negative effect on depression, low cognitive confidence, uncontrollability, and danger. Furthermore, self-focused attention had a positive effect on depression. It is concluded that people who evaluate which coping strategy is required, or easily stop non-functional thoughts or non-functional coping strategies, may switch to new coping strategies flexibly and may not easily lead to depression.

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