Objective: To evaluate the feasibility of using the hand scale method as a simple indicator of vegetable intake based on assuming one handful of vegetables is 60 g.

Methods: A cross-sectional research design was conducted using a web questionnaire provided to healthy adults (20–70 years old) in April 2020. The diet of the subjects was studied for 3 d (2 weekdays, 1 holiday). Subjects estimated their vegetable intake using the hand scale method. The vegetable intake was also calculated by a dietitian using the photographic method. The correlation between the vegetable intake estimations derived by the two methods was verified.

Results: A total of 338 healthy subjects (168 males, average age 44.3 years; 170 females, average age 44.9 years) who answered all questions were included in the analysis (effective response rate: 67.3%). The correlation coefficient of the mean vegetable intake estimated by the two methods was 0.63 (P<0.001), indicating a significant positive correlation. On the other hand, the vegetable intake estimated by the hand scale method was significantly lower than that by the photographic method (P<0.001), suggesting that the vegetable intake estimated by the hand scale method would be underestimated.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that the hand scale method could be used to estimate vegetable intake. However, the hand scale method was suggested to underestimate vegetable intake. Thus, further study is needed to quantitatively measure the ability of the hand scale method to estimate vegetable intake.

Objective: To explore current eating behaviors (EBs) and life events (LEs) that affected the EBs among community-dwelling older adults.

Methods: A questionnaire survey and semi-structured interview were conducted between May and September 2022. Twenty-seven older adults living in community settings were asked to describe their EBs on the day before the survey date, including diet, meal timings, and people who had the meals together. The interviewer identified the routine EBs, and the participants were further asked when and why the routine EBs had been changed. Using the scripts of the interviews, EB changes and the corresponding LEs that affected these EB changes were coded. The codes of EB changes and LEs were separately classified into a theme and a subtheme using the thematic analysis method.

Results: The average age (SD) of the participants was 76.8 (4.8) years. Among the participants, 13 (48%) were men, and 3 (11%) were living alone. The coded EB changes were classified into seven EB change themes and 29 subthemes, which included various EBs such as meal planning, food choice, cooking, eating, and cleaning. The LEs that affected the EB changes were classified into seven LE themes and 30 subthemes. Of these, three of the seven LE themes, occupation, family, and health-related LE themes, primarily affected the EB changes.

Conclusion: This study indicated that the diverse EBs were primarily affected by occupation, family, and health-related LEs among community-dwelling older adults.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to clarify the relationship between the status of receiving medical treatment at medical institutions and the behavior of participating in specific health checkups, taking into consideration the types of diseases that are being treated at medical institutions.

Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of data on the status of receiving medical treatment at medical institutions and participating in specific health checkups in 2019 and responses to a self-administered, anonymous questionnaire survey conducted in 2020 among the National Health Insurance insured persons aged 40 to 74 years in Matsuura City, Nagasaki Prefecture. The presence or absence of the specific health checkup was used as the dependent variable and the status of receiving medical treatment at medical institutions as the independent variable, and the results were analyzed performing logistic regression analysis by age group after adjusting for sociodemographic background.

Results: A total of 1927 respondents of the questionnaire survey whose data were not missing were analyzed. Regardless of gender, family structure, years of education, exercise habits, self-rated health, and self-rated economic status, “persons with medical treatment for hypertension or dyslipidemia” (P<0.001) and “persons with medical treatment for conditions other than hypertension and dyslipidemia” (P<0.001) more likely participated in the specific health checkups than those who had not received any medical treatment among those aged 60 to 74 years. However, no statistically significant trend was observed among those aged 40 to 59 years.

Conclusion: Among persons aged 60 to 74 years, persons with any medical treatment regardless of the type of disease more likely participated in the specific health checkups.

The focal theme of the 31st Annual Conference organized by the Japanese Society for Health Education and Promotion was “Challenging the Gap between Evidence and Practice.” The aim of the conference was to delve into the roles and methodologies to be assumed by health education and promotion from the viewpoint of how evidence generated through basic research, clinical research, and epidemiological research can be applied in society and linked to practice. Notably, this was the first face-to-face meeting since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 423 participants (362 on-site and 61 online) attended the conference. The designated topics included the President’s Lecture, a trilogy focusing on measures to foster an environment conducive to healthy lifestyles, Meet the Expert sessions on four themes, two educational lectures on tobacco control advocacy and implementation science, two symposia on health promotion and quality improvement in health care, and nudges and incentives, and lecture on the Society’s Encouragement Award. A total of 73 general presentations were made: 63 oral presentations and 10 round table presentations. Of the 63 oral presentations, five were honored with the Society President’s Award. The co-sponsored seminars, including an evening seminar on vaccination and two luncheon seminars on the use of nudges and ICT, were held. The post-conference questionnaires indicated a high level of satisfaction with the conference and the various insights and learnings that were offered. We hope this conference will lead to further development of each participant’s practice and research endeavors.

Social implementation, in which research results are applied to real world situations, is attracting greater attention. Tobacco control concerns the efforts for reducing damage to people’s health by introducing research findings regarding the health effects of smoking to society. Tobacco control is regarded as a model for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) control. Tobacco control measures offer many lessons for other health policies, such as nutrition and physical activity. The specific lessons learned include: research strategy procedures for policy realization; the development of intervention programs based on behavioral science; comprehensive policies that include environmental improvements involving changes in systems and laws; policy research that builds the evidence necessary for policy making and evaluates policy impacts; the importance of advocacy for policy realization; considerations of fundamental measures to counter essential barriers and pressures; and a system for promotion under international collaboration through a framework convention.

In order to improve the quality of health policy, it is necessary for health policy researchers to interact with each other across disciplines, discuss how to promote policy, and work together to realize policy. Advocacy, which is lagging behind in the Japanese context, requires the establishment of academic foundations and the development of methodologies, as well as the creation of a network for collaboration among various organizations and groups, including citizen movements and academic groups.

On the initiation of Health Japan 21 (Third Edition), discussions were conducted across multiple domains, with a focus on environmental improvements, and an analysis of the current situation and future developments in the fields of nutrition and dietary habits, physical activity, and tobacco control. A common framework for domestic and overseas policy consolidation, referred to as the “intervention ladder,” was used to categorize interventions according to their content and the level of their impact. The current state of environmental improvements in Japan compared to international standards showed that there are numerous efforts in Japan categorized as having a low impact on the intervention ladder compared to those abroad, indicating that efforts are insufficient. Future actions were highlighted in all three domains, emphasizing collaboration with multiple sectors and departments, including private enterprises. Challenges related to evaluation were also identified, with the need for academic involvement in the establishment of evaluation mechanisms. Internationally, there were examples of comprehensive and systematic approaches to environmental improvements, such as WHO’s MPOWER framework for tobacco control, and several international evaluation mechanisms for policy assessments. In Health Japan 21 (Third Edition), achieving more effective initiatives required the development of logic models that clearly outline the pathways to reach the goals (outcomes). The Research Board on Environmental Improvement for Health of this academic society is currently progressing in the creation of logic models and action plans by referencing best practices and evidence in all three domains. The discussions presented in this article aim to further the activities of the Research Board on Environmental Improvement for Health and contribute to the enhancement of the quality of the practices for health education and health promotion in various settings as an academic organization.

During the period of high economic growth in Japan, there was increased environmental destruction, water pollution, and air pollution in some areas. Therefore, the local governments investigated and verified the environmental destruction and enacted ordinances containing regulations. The Japanese government started taking measures ten years after the local governments. Smoking regulations have become a social issue recently; however, Japan has delayed enacting measures. It is desirable for the public and private sectors to work together to solve the problems in local areas; however, this is challenging because local residents have to spend a lot of time dealing with land maintenance problems. The local government has continued to monitor the situation and provide active support, aiming to “think globally, act locally” (as defined by 1960s–1970s American activist René Jules Dubo). We have been enacting measures against the smoking problem in Hamamatsu City for twenty-three years to make our social environment smoke-free. As a result, the number of smoking areas has decreased, and the citizen smoking rate has fallen below 10%, contributing to the extension of healthy life expectancy in Hamamatsu City.

Implementation science is the scientific discipline of implementing evidence-based interventions (EBIs). The research questions that implementation science addresses are the very questions that need to be answered to close the evidence-practice gap. Specifically, the research questions are 1) what are the barriers to and facilitators of implementation of EBIs as routine practice in the field?; 2) what type of approach (implementation strategy) should be used to implement EBIs according to the barriers and facilitators?; 3) do specific implementation strategies improve implementation outcomes?; and 4) how should existing EBIs be adapted to the local context without compromising the effectiveness of the EBIs? Implementation science can serve as a useful guide when there are practices that are beneficial to residents and patients and that stakeholders in the field strongly desire to disseminate and implement. Implementation science also provides an opportunity to scientifically describe such practices and report new findings. This paper first provides a general description of implementation research, and then presents an example of implementation research currently being conducted by the National Cancer Center’s Implementation Science Team on smoking cessation in small- and medium-sized enterprises. Finally, we present our activities related to the dissemination and implementation of implementation science.

Background: The Japanese Society of Health Education and Promotion-the Young Division has been conducting various activities since 2015 with the aim of exchanging ideas and improving the skills of young researchers and practitioners. This article summarizes the “Meet the Expert” session at the 31st Annual Conference of the Japanese Society of Health Education and Promotion.

Contents: Four lecturers were invited, and four seminars were held. The themes and lecturers were as follows: 1. action research in research papers (Dr. Yuko Yako-Suketomo), 2. sex education in school health (Dr. Masaru Ueji), 3. nudges in health education and health promotion (Dr. Masaki Takebayashi), and 4. health literacy of the working-age population (Dr. Hiroshi Fukuda). Lectures, Q&A sessions, group work, and individual work were conducted during each seminar. A total of 314 people participated in this session. Results from a questionnaire survey showed that more than 95% of the respondents answered “very satisfied” or “slightly satisfied” with all four seminars. Feedback included appreciation for providing opportunities to learn and obtain encouragement, the quality of the content and structure of the project, expectations for next year’s event, and requests and suggestions for more active exchanges.

Conclusion: This session provided an opportunity to deepen the participants’ understanding of each theme and to apply it to their future activities. Based on the suggestions, we would like to begin preparing for the young division’s project at next year’s annual conference.

Previous studies have produced several checklists that can be used when writing and reviewing qualitative research papers. The present study introduces the main checklist, JARS-Qual (Japanese version), to provide authors and reviewers a common understanding of qualitative research papers, and summarizes the main points, including critical remarks on the use of checklists. Practical techniques for conducting qualitative research are also reported, based on the author’s learning and experience through the qualitative research process. Qualitative and quantitative research are oriented toward the common goal of “pursuing universal truths,” if we take a broad view of science. Researchers need to understand both qualitative and quantitative research, and possess the required literacy and develop the appropriate mindset to use both in a complementary and synergistic manner.