News

We organized a social meeting at the 41st Annual Conference of the Japan Academy of Nursing Science, which was held online on Saturday, December 4 and Sunday, December 5, 2021. We have been holding the meeting since 2017, and this was our fifth report on community-based elderly care support. The Annual Conference of the Japan Academy of Nursing Science gathers participants from nursing-related universities and colleges across Japan; for this reason, this meeting is a great opportunity for interaction with a wide range of people involved in the field. Up to last year, the exchange meetings focused primarily on how we implemented a communication skill training program for meter reading staff working at a company's model office and later expanded it throughout the company, as well as considering the activities that were carried out building on the program's achievements in more detail. In this year's meeting, we gave a presentation revolving around two themes. The first theme was about disaster relief. Given how frequently Kyushu is hit by disasters caused by heavy rain, we have expanded our scope to include disaster relief since last year. We analyzed the results of two surveys we had carried out to explore how elderly care support should be provided at times of disaster: one is to understand the safety needs of local senior residents, and the other is with company employees, so as to illustrate the disaster prevention awareness among senior residents and company employees and as well as their views on disaster relief.

As the so-called "2025 issue" is right around the corner, we chose the topic of isolation of senior residents living alone as the second theme. At the time of the project's launch, our goal was to develop a system for visiting senior residents living alone; the COVID-19 pandemic has made the system's development all the more urgent. This year, we launched an initiative aimed at preventing senior social isolation through providing support online. We gave a presentation on our initiative that aims to utilize an app developed by the local Council of Social Welfare to stimulate exchange among senior residents. We received questions from participants interested in industry-academia-government collaboration about the specific measures involved, and the meeting served as a great opportunity to share our thoughts on the significance and prospects of our activities.

Miyuki Munemasa, Ayako Ura, Kazuyo Iwanaga, Chizuko Yoshikawa, Kaori Maki, Yukimi Ohmura, Tamami Ueno

Briefing Session on the Senior Safety App