Objective: Accumulating evidence indicates that fostering a workplace culture of health is important for reducing health risks and improving productivity. The purpose of this literature review was to identify and organize qualitative and inductive concepts of workplace culture of health.

Methods: An online search was conducted on Web of Science and CiNii, using the search term. For the 19 cases that met the inclusion criteria, contents relating to workplace culture of health were extracted and classified according to their meaning; categories were then thematized and named.

Results: A total of 10 categories relating to workplace culture of health were created. These included: proclamations of organizational policy for health promotion, health promotion initiatives that meet employee needs, employee engagement in workplace health promotions, organizational interest in employee health, and coworker health support.

Conclusion: It is suggested that efforts to maintain and improve health and its evaluation from the perspective of workplace culture of health are also effective in implementing health promotion efforts effectively and efficiently in health and productivity management.

Objective: To clarify the concept of “healthy eating literacy” for adolescence and early adulthood and evaluate usefulness of the concept in public health activities and research.

Methods: Rodgers’ evolutionary concept analysis was employed. A total of forty-one articles including seven Japanese articles and thirty-four articles written in English published in the past 5 years, besides those published earlier but essential for discussion of the concept analysis, were reviewed.

Results: The following six attributes: “one of the components of health literacy”, “elements of a healthy diet” “elements of a choosing healthy food”, “reflecting one’s motivation and confidence for eating”, “changed by relationship with individuals and society”, and “basis of culture”, fourteen antecedent conditions, and four consequences were deduced.

Conclusion: “Healthy eating literacy” in adolescence and early adulthood is “the ability to select appropriate food, critically evaluate one’s own eating behavior, and apply it in order to have a healthy eating lifestyle”. To improve this literacy, it was implied that appropriate intervention is important aiming factors which one can control in antecedent conditions.

Objective: Saitama City Board of Education has provided basic life support (BLS) training system to school teachers using the life-saving program “ASUKA model,” which resulted from the lessons following the death of a child. This study aimed to evaluate the training system and identify issues by comparing the results of regular teachers with those of nursing teachers (Yogo teachers).

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study of all schools in Saitama City using a self-administered anonymous questionnaire in 2018. A total of 166 schools were enrolled, and 3,026 teachers from 150 schools responded. We analyzed the data of 2,351 regular teachers and 152 Yogo teachers.

Results: The percentage of regular teachers who received BLS training more than 10 times and who answered that they could perform BLS was about 40%. However, more than 40% of the regular teachers who had more than ten BLS training sessions responded that they lacked the confidence to perform BLS. Among the reasons included are as follows: they would experience anxiety in emergencies, they would become worried about performing inadequate BLS, and they could not take responsibility for failure to rescue. Moreover, in comparison with Yogo teachers, regular teachers focused on learning BLS techniques and not on learning the warning signs of a medical emergency, knowing when to start BLS, or having the responsibility of saving students’ lives. The regular teachers’ strong sense of responsibility for saving lives was significantly related to their confidence in performing BLS.

Conclusion: The Saitama City Board of Education’s BLS training system was shown to be effective for teachers when training is conducted repeatedly. To improve the regular teachers’ BLS practical skills, regular teachers need to learn when and why they perform BLS and to relieve the anxiety of performing BLS using actual emergency scenarios in training.

Objective: To examine the differences in information sources and outcome expectancy, depending on the degree of interest in food-related community activities to encourage elderly people to participate in community activities.

Methods: We conducted a self-administered questionnaire survey for participants in care prevention projects in Higashimurayama city, Tokyo, from October to December 2019. Items in the questionnaire were on demographic characteristics, interest in food-related activities, years of participation in food-related activities, number of food-related activities that individuals have participated in, information sources of activities, outcome expectancy, and self-rated health. Data obtained from 235 participants aged ≥65 years was analyzed. We compared the characteristics of information sources and outcome expectancy by assigning participants to three groups depending on the degree of interest.

Results: Sixty-seven (28.5%) participants were very interested in food-related community activities, 98 (41.7%) participants were fairly interested, and 70 (29.8%) were not interested. “Not interested” participants were more likely to use “people” rather than “print media” as an information source as compared to “very interested” participants (OR (odds rate) [95% confidence interval]=2.28 [1.01, 5.19]). “Not interested” and “fairly interested” participants had low outcome expectancy to activities.

Conclusion: Participants who were not interested in food-related community activities mainly used information from people around them rather than print media. It is suggested that it is crucial to create pleasant experiences for people who are not interested and those with low outcome expectancy when they first participate in order to encourage them to continue participating in community activities.

Objective: To clarify the association of a well-balanced diet with lifestyle, knowledge, health consciousness, and health status.

Methods: As a cross-sectional study, self-administered questionnaires and health checkup data were collected at a university in Hyogo prefecture in 2019. Female participants’ data were divided into two groups based on their weekly consumption of a well-balanced diet (i.e., staple food, main, and side dishes) at least twice a day. Data on lifestyle, knowledge, health consciousness, and health status were compared between the two groups using the chi-squared test. Additionally, using each as independent variables and well-balanced diet as the dependent variable, logistic regression analyses were conducted after adjusting for age and resident status.

Results: Respectively, 90 and 63 students were classified into the high and low frequency of well-balanced diet groups (HFWBD: 4 ≤ per week, LFWBD: ≤ 3 per week). The logistic regression analysis showed a significantly higher odds ratio for HFWBD among students who frequently cooked for themselves (odds ratio [95% CI]: 2.96 [1.15, 7.64]), had nutritional knowledge (3.33 [1.30, 8.48]), and cared about their health (7.29 [3.13, 16.98]). Higher BMI and body fat percentage were associated with lower odds ratios for HFWBD (0.84 [0.72, 0.98] and 0.90 [0.83, 0.98], respectively). Compared to students with normal weight (BMI 18.5 to less than 25 kg/m²), those who were underweight (<18.5 kg/m²) had a significantly higher odds ratio for HFWBD (3.49 [1.19, 10.22]).

Conclusion: Lifestyle, knowledge, health consciousness, and health status were associated with the frequency of consuming a well-balanced diet.

Objective: To practice lessons aimed at enhancing self-esteem from a cross-curricular perspective in special subject moral and physical education targeting children in lower grades of elementary school, and to examine the effect using before-after study design.

Activities: In November 2018, 4 hours of special subject moral and 6 hours of physical education, a total of 10 hours of lessons, were held for 60 second graders in elementary. In a special subject moral class, students took notes and gave a speech about the good deeds of their friends and how happy they felt. In physical education class, students were encouraged to offer support in exercise activities and praise the efforts of their classmates as group activities took place every hour.

Activity evaluations: The pre-survey was conducted in late October 2018, and the post-survey was conducted in late November, using an anonymous self-administered questionnaire. Eight out of 9 items were related to self-esteem and the percentage of positive responses was high in the post-survey. For example, the percentage of positive responses for the question “Do you feel good about yourself?” changed from 63.2% in the pre-survey to 73.7% in the post-survey. It was suggested that cross-curricular efforts in special subject moral and physical education are effective in improving self-esteem among elementary school students. However, in all items, there was no significant difference in the percentage of positive responses between the pre-survey and the post-survey.

Future projects: It is hoped that the approach to enhance students’ self-esteem will continue to be practiced at various opportunities in school education.

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a cooking practice program in improving confidence in cooking and enhancing self-esteem among elementary school students.

Methods: Based on the quasi-experimental design, the program was conducted a total of four times every second week for fourth to sixth-graders. The intervention group (comprising 20 students) cooked dinner together with the staff’s help, after which they all ate the meal together. The control group (comprising 17 students) ate a dinner provided by the staff. In the process evaluation, the participants were asked about the difficulty of the program and their satisfaction with it. The effectiveness of the program was evaluated by examining participants self-esteem and confidence in cooking operations including cutting of vegetables, baking meat, making miso soup, adjusting seasoning, and using the stove safely, before and after program completion. Two subjects from the control group who participated in less than half of the program were excluded from the analysis.

Results: The results of the process evaluation were considered satisfactory. Compared with the control group, the intervention group experienced a large change in the total confidence level with cooking operation before and after program completion, and the difference between the both groups was significant (P = 0.009). Participants mean (SD) scores for self-esteem increased from 22.4 (4.5) before the program to 23.5 (3.8) after the program in the intervention group (P = 0.043). However, change in self-esteem showed no difference between the two groups (P = 0.753).

Conclusion: Although the cooking practice program did not show any self-esteem enhancing effect among elementary school students, it was suggested that it was effective in improving their confidence in cooking.

Objective: We held a summer seminar with our study group of multidisciplinary occupational health staff on the topic, ‘How did COVID-19 change the world, health education, and health promotion?’ Here we describe the seminar and its evaluation by participants.

Methods: This seminar was held using Zoom online by twelve coordinators of the study group on September 13, 2020. The first part was a keynote speech, the second part was an introduction of topics from the occupational health workplace, and the third part was group work on new possibilities and applications of online communication tools. Participants completed a questionnaire in a Google form to evaluate the seminar.

Results: There were 71 participants, of whom 52 (73.2%) completed the survey, comprising 69.2% women, 34.6% in their 40s, and 53.8% nurses. The seminar parts were considered useful by 80.8–96.2%. Also, 94.2% thought they would use what they learned and 96.2% were satisfied with the seminar overall.

Conclusion: In this seminar, participants discussed topics such as health education during the COVID-19 pandemic, the meaning of health promotion, example cases, and possibilities. Most participants were satisfied with the seminar. The seminar may thus be considered meaningful.

Objectives: Online courses were introduced in all Japanese universities in 2020 because of the spread of COVID-19 infection. The autogenic training (AT) seminar held at University A was also taken online. This article reports on the practice of online AT seminars for freshmen.

Field activity: Participants were healthy freshmen enrolled in University A (N=21, 11 men and ten women). Instructors were four University A’ teachers. The AT seminar was held once a week for ten times from May to July in 2020 using a video conferencing system. Participants conducted AT individually and inputted the practice record into an electronic file. Each participant and the instructors shared the record using a file hosting service. Over one instructor checked the practice record and provided individual instructions using email.

Assessments: Sixteen participants completed all the sessions. The online AT seminar had the following advantages compared to the previous face-to-face seminar; students could watch and listen to question and answer sessions as well as opinion exchanges between instructors, and appropriate instructions were provided regularly to students. Moreover, the level of understanding, acquisition, and continuity of AT by the participants increased. Furthermore, the online AT seminar functioned as social support for new university students, contributing to maintaining and improving their well-being.

Future implications: Investigating the effects of combining online and face-to-face AT seminars.

Objective: This article presents an evaluation of the instructional effectiveness of on-demand poster presentation as an academic practice in class.

Field activity: A total of 136 students, of which 95.6% were female, participated in the study. The participants took a “health promotion in child care,” a compulsory subject for the licensure of child-caregiver and child education teacher. After gathering the information for a specific type of child disease, the participants were asked to summarize the information into a poster and create short video presentations of what they learned. To evaluate the instructional effectiveness of this learning style, the participants’ feedback for the following items were obtained: (1) feedback in terms of this learning style as a presenter, (2) feedback in terms of this learning style as viewer, (3) general good points about this learning style, and (4) difficulty encountered during the process. The topic model by the Latent Dirichlet Allocation was used to extract the instructional effectiveness from the participants’ feedback.

Assessments: The analysis showed that this learning style allows the presenter to add additional explanations to the presentation, to retry recording as needed and to insert visual aids using video editing software. The accessibility of the learning materials is also an advantage. Students can watch at any point of the presentation as frequently as they need to solidify their understanding. This does not only assist in the transfer of knowledge, but it also motivates self-regulated learning.

Future implications: On the other hand, this learning style pose a challenge to future educators. There is a need to ease their anxiety and relax their tension towers the presentation. They also need to provide adequate technical assistance throughout the learning process and to create an enabling environment for interactive communication.

Prevention is one of the main measures against COVID-19. This report discusses the necessity of measures against COVID-19 based on salutogenesis, which is a different perspective from disease prevention. Furthermore, we salutogenically organized and interpreted problems in the COVID-19 pandemic from three viewpoints: stress, behavioral change, and stigma. It is possible to promote stress measures related to COVID-19 salutogenically. In particular, it is important to take measures against the low sense of coherence. The stress theory is one of the background theories in salutogenesis and many previous empirical studies examined the sense of coherence in stress coping capacity. Behavioral changes, such as mandated face masks, cough etiquette, and keeping spatial distance, are considered salutogenic measures in the sense that their adaptation was required in the new social life rather than as pathogenic measures. COVID-19 stigma measures should follow stigma measures toward people living with psychiatric problems as a guide. As the sense of coherence is related to self-stigma and health literacy is related to public stigma, many anti-stigma programs have been evaluated. Further salutogenic measures against COVID-19 stigma are expected to be developed and carried out. We concluded that a salutogenic approach is effective against future problems during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective: To qualitatively examine the change in the dietary habits of students who attended the elective online class “Introduction to Nutrition” conducted by a university in Tokyo, Japan. Based on the results, we discuss the potential of online nutrition education for the younger generation.

Methods: In total, 15 lessons were provided to the students. After reviewing their food consumption based on their written dietary records at the beginning of the class, they learned about nutrient function and metabolism, dietary reference intakes, national health/dietary problems, and nutrition policy. At the end of the class, they wrote again dietary record to review their issues and changes during the class. The reports of 89 students were qualitatively analyzed using the content analysis method.

Results: The most common dietary issue was “insufficient vegetable intake.” The most common changes observed after attending the class were “increased consumption of vegetables” and “increased consumption of fruits.” Most students responded with “I had breakfast” when asked how the online lessons influenced them. When asked for voluntary feedback on these lessons, 46.1% of the students shared positive responses, such as “I understood how to utilize what I learned in elementary, junior high and high school” and “I want to utilize what I learned for the future.”

Conclusion: Findings suggest that offering online nutrition classes in higher education institutions may be useful for improving the dietary problems in individuals in their 20s. The methods and evaluation of such online lessons need to be further considered and examined.

In 2014, for the purpose of optimizing life rhythm of university students, Ritsumeikan University started “100 yen Choushoku”that provides breakfast with a fee of 100 yen. Since these breakfasts have been served only 60–20 minutes before class, eating the breakfasts guides the students to get up early and attend class regularly. We evaluated that this activity builds a healthy lifestyle for the students. Our activity was awarded the “4th Smart Life Project Award (Let's extend healthy life expectancy!)” by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare in 2015. Under appreciation and requests of both parents and students, the “100 yen Choushoku” activity has been continued under current situation with COVID-19.