Diabetes Care Providers' Manual for Disaster Diabetes Care.

To ensure that experiences and lessons learned from the unprecedented 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake are used to improve future disaster planning, the Japan Diabetes Society (JDS) launched the "Research and Survey Committee for Establishing Disaster Diabetes Care Systems Based on Relevant Findings from the Great East Japan Earthquake" under the supervision of the Chairman of the JDS. The Committee conducted a questionnaire survey among patients with diabetes, physicians, disaster medical assistance teams (DMATs), nurses, pharmacists, and nutritionists in disaster areas about the events they saw happening, the situations they found difficult to handle, and the needs that they felt required to be met during the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. A total of 3,481 completed questionnaires were received. Based on these and other experiences and lessons reported following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and the 2004 Niigata-Chuetsu Earthquakes, the current "Manual for Disaster Diabetes Care" has been developed by the members of the Committee and other invited authors from relevant specialties. To our knowledge, the current Manual is the world's first to focus on emergency diabetes care, with this digest English version translated from the Japanese original. It is sincerely hoped that patients with diabetes and healthcare providers around the world will find this manual helpful in promoting disaster preparedness and implementing disaster relief.

Healthy Aging and Concerns Among Elderly Japanese: A Text Analysis Approach.

Japan is facing an unprecedented aging society. In 2013, 25.1% of the total population in Japan was 65 years old and over. One third of the population in Japan will be at least 65 years old in 2035; healthy aging is crucial for public health and society in Japan. Under the budget limitations of social security, policies and frequent policy changes have created great uncertainty and concern for the elderly population. Given these circumstances, we conducted questionnaire surveys in 2010 to examine concerns in this age-group. In 2010, we sent questionnaires to university graduates 65 years old and older, randomly selected from a list of an alumni association of 11 universities. The questionnaires were open-ended and asked them to write any concerns that they had about health care, health policy, health systems, and their future. We received 344 responses. Among those who responded, 271 (78.8%) respondents said that they had concerns. We conducted a text analysis (Trend Search-Keyword Associator 2008) and extracted the keywords from their responses. The keywords that were extracted frequently included hospitals, doctors, health-care system, health care, Japanese government policies, government, medical insurance system for the elderly, support, increase, copayment, health (their own), scarcities, and burdens. In this study, many elderly people in Japan are concerned about health-care expenditures, health-care systems, and health policies. This may be caused by frequent health policy changes and uncertainty due to frequent administration changes such as the lack of clarity concerning raising the out of pocket payment rate from 10% to 20% for elderly people under budget constraints in Japan. Correct policy making and determination to eliminate the concerns from this vulnerable population in Japan are necessary for healthy aging.