Objective: In 2008, Japanese government started the new health check-up system focused on metabolic syndrome (MetS) followed by lifestyle intervention programs. To evaluate the long-term effect of this intervention, we followed up the participants of our intensive support program for a year, and investigated the changes in the major health indices.
Methods: We recruited 90 participants who were covered by the Public Insurance of the Local Government, with MetS or pre-MetS in the annual health check-up. They participated in a 3-months lifestyle intervention program, but did not receive any support after that. At the beginning and the end of the intervention, their body weight, abdominal circumference, and other related indices of MetS were measured. The same indices were measured six months and a year later. As for the control group, we randomly selected the participants who use the same health insurance and who underwent the annual health check-ups in the two successive years. Then we investigated the changes in the indices above in those two check-ups.
Results: Of 90 participants who attended the intervention, 86completed the three months program (avg. age 59.3), and 75 underwent all of the four evaluations. Even one year after the intervention, their body weight was reduced by 6.5%(SD5.1), and the percentage of MetS patients decreased by 62.5%. The MetS related indices were significantly improved in the intervention group, whereas no changes were seen in the control group.
Conclusions: The benefit of the 3-months intensive support to improves MetS lasted even one year after the intervention. Not only body weight and MetS patient ratio but also improved MetS related indices were maintained in the next annual health check-up.

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Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a health education intervention conducting using a feedback leaflet including personal data in the initial survey on health related quality of life (QOL), depression, menopausal symptoms, and role burden
Methods: A total of 113 middle-aged female workers were randomly assigned to an intervention (n=57) and control group (n=56). An educational intervention was conducted using feedback leaflet pertaining to the individual data obtained from the initial survey. The following conditions were detected from the survey health related QOL (medical outcomes study-short form-36(SF-36)), depression (Center for Epidemiologic Study Depression Scale (CES-D)), menopausal symptoms (Kupperman Index), and role burden related to housekeeping or work (visual analogue scales (VAS)) measured at baseline, after three months.
Results: The educational intervention did not improve all mental and physical aspects of the health related QOL (SF-36) and other outcomes in 108 females. However, among those who belonged to the depression group, the intervention group (n=10) showed an improvement as compared to the control group (n=10) on the role physical scale in eight subdomain SF-36 scores (P=0.03).
Conclusion: The health education intervention using a feedback leaflet can be effective among those who are in a state of depression.

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One of the six indicators for the “International Safe Communities” is that the community has programs that document the frequency and causes of injuries. In Kameoka city, the first safe community, in Japan, a research committee started its activity on injury surveillance program. Though many official public statistics were available on injuries, such as vital statistics (mortality), police survey, and fireman survey, in Japan, they do not show the frequency and causes of mild injuries. Therefore, the committee started the injury surveillance program. The data were collected from injury case reports of 4 hospitals and 17 clinics in Kameoka from May, 2007 to the end of April, 2008. When the injury surveillance program was started, many different cross- sectional groups supported the program: they were the police and fireman section as well as the public health center, the medical association and the dental association in the city. These results suggest that Kameoka city could have another indicator for the “International Safe Communities.” It is an infrastructure based on partnership and collaborations, governed by a cross- sectional group that is responsible for safety promotion in the community.

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There have been few discussions about workplace safety in terms of safety promotion. This article reviews the current status and future tasks of workplace safety from the perspective of safety promotion. The Québec Document proposes that companies should be involved in safety promotion. According to the definition of safe community, various safety promotion activities are expected to take place in workplaces. In Japan, more than 100,000 workers have experienced accidents or sustain injuries in the workplace every year. Accidents and injuries are prone to occur in small companies: 70% of accidents and injuries occur in small-scale enterprises (SSEs) with less than 50 employees. If the company's safety system is established in accordance with Industrial Safety and Health Law, the indicators of safety in the workplace used in safe community will satisfy these standards. The problem is that the appointment of safety supervisors and establishment of a safety committee as promulgated in the Industrial Safety and Health Law are not required in SSEs and self-employed businesses, despite the fact that 97% of workplaces are SSEs. In this context, it is very important to develop methods for promoting safety measures in SSEs and self-employed businesses. SSEs and self-employed businesses have closer connections with the community than big companies, so people in charge of safety measures in SSEs and self-employed businesses are expected to have safe community perspectives. People in charge of safe community are also expected to have a perspective that workplace safety is a component of safe community.

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Unintentional injuries are one of the most serious problems among children. Such injuries are the leading causes of death among children aged 10-19 years worldwide and those aged 1-14 years in Japan. Across the world, a majority of the injuries of children aged 0-17 years are caused by road traffic collisions, drowning, burns, falls, and poisoning, and Japan has the similar trend. Injuries of this nature can be controlled and prevented. However, to actualize this, a wide range of prevention approaches is necessary, because these injuries are caused by many factors.
In Japan, schools play a major role in injury prevention in conjunction with families, the community, and related organizations. School safety programs include safety in daily life, traffic safety, and safety during natural disasters. Injury prevention mainly covers primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention along with safety administration and safety education. Safety administration, including environmental modification and administration to students, is implemented under the School Health and Safety Law. School safety education is generally imparted on the lines of the National Curriculum Guidelines. Injured children are supported by the Injury and Accident Mutual Aid Benefit System. The program aims to provide mutual assistance benefits for the injuries suffered.
The challenges undertaken by school safety programs are as follows: to improve the quality of data for injury prevention, to plan the programs comprehensively on the basis of the data analyzed and the principle of injury prevention, and to implement the process and outcome evaluation of the programs.

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The 7th Global Conference on Health Promotion with the theme “Promoting health and development,closing the implementation gap” was held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 26-30 October, 2009. As an immediate outcome, “Nairobi Call to Action” was released at the end of the conference. The main theme of the conference aimed to clarify key strategies and commitments of each country in order to narrow its major implementation gaps in health and development through health promotion. Five urgent responsibilities were identified in the Call, which was based on the collective views of more than 600 international on-site delegates and online participants from more than a hundred countries. We would like to introduce the whole document and its Japanese translation to the Journal readers (It was translated by Koji Kanda, Hiroko Yamashina, Masamine Jimba, Keiko Otsuka, and Hidehiko Tamashiro).

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