‹Purpose› The purpose of this investigation was to identify factors associated with caregiver burden among primary caregivers of severely disabled persons. Caregiver burden was defined as low self-perceptions of and quality of life (QOL) .
‹Methods› A questionnaire survey was conducted on 77 primary caregivers for people with severe physical and mental disabilities in Osaka and Nara Prefectures. Questions relating ti their self-assessment of health and life, came from the “QoL Questionnaire” formulated by Nagata K. (1989) . To invrstigate factors associated with problems in caregivers, we examined the ADL Level and communication abikity of the disabled and the osychological adaptability of their caregivers to severe disabilities.
‹Result and Conclusions› Among factor related to caregiver burden as seen in their negative self-assessment of health and life, the following appear to be the most serious:
1. They see living together with their disabled family member as essntially a burden.
2. They are concerned about the aging of their disabled family member.
3. They know that they cannot depend on support from others, both formal and informal.
4. There is no time to relax.
5. There in little information provided to them about how to care for the disabled person.
6. Financial difficulties.
These findings will be used to develop interventions for the maintenance of caregiver's good health.

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The importance of the control of health from childhood has been expounded in recent years.
There has been a lot of research targeting school children, but little is known about infants at nursery school. Though the need for control of health at nursery school is recognized, the percentage of nursery schools which have a nurse is only 17%.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the circumstances of health activities in nursery schools, and to establish roles for nurse. The data was collected from 457 nursery schools (65.1%) in Saitama Prefecture.
The results were as follows:
1. Nursery schools which have a nurse number 102 (22.4%), but 332 nursery schools (73.0%) have no nurse. The percentage of nursery schools at which the nurse devoted themselves exclusively to the work of health care, was 15.7%.
2. There were various troubles at 51.2% of the nursery schools which have no nurse. The reasons were a lack of knowledge of health care and the difficulty involved in doing both health care and child care.
3. The number of nursery schools that provide health guidance at home is higher in nursery schools which have a nurse than in nursery schools which have no nurse.
Therefore, it is obvious that, presently human resources are not sufficient to provide health education and health care at nursery schools in Saitama Prefecture.

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With the object of analyzing the changes in the AIDS situation and how it affects Japanese adolescents/youths, we studied AIDS-related knowledge and risk behavior among high school students in Kansai area in 1990 and in 1994. Those who received AIDS education in high schools in the 1990 and the 1994 studies were 34.4% and 57.6%, respectively. The subjects in the 1994 study had much more AIDS-related knowledge than those in the 1990 study. The percentage of those who had correct knowledge on “effectiveness of condoms against HIV infection” in the 1994 study was 96.8%, a greater percentage than 52.4% in the 1990 study. There were, however, 7 items in which more than one out of three subjects still gave wrong answers in the 1994 study. As for the knowledge scores, there was no sex difference observed as of 1990. Female students, however, showed significantly higher knowledge than males in the 1994 study. A significant decrease was observed in the percentages of those who agreed with the statement “The AIDS epidemic has changed some of my sexual practices”, between the 1990 study (14.1%) and the 1994 study (7.3%) . The percentage of those who had already experienced sexual intercourse was 16.6% in the 1994 study, nearly doubling the 8.0% in the 1990 study. As more students have engaged in sexual relationships from year to year, their habitual use of condoms has been increasing, with 22.9% in the 1990 study and 54.4% in the 1994 study. About 1.5% of the subjects in the 1990 study had tried IV drugs, and this percentage did not change in the 1994 study.

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