ABSTRACT

“Health Promotion Plan in Japan toward the 21stCentury (健康日本21)” is policy decision-making to determine nu-merical value of goal to be achieved until 2010 for total healthpromotion, the aim of which is to realize healthy and fully activesociety in the future. Accumulated evidences on health status oractual figures of cardiovascular disease are reduction in bothmortality and morbidity of cerebral stroke and no change in bothof coronary heart disease. It seems to be idealistic, but riskfactors for cardiovascular disease were recently and remarkablychanged, that is reduction in prevalence of hypertension, whileincrease in obesity, glucose intolerance and hyperlipidemia.Meanwhile, with growing number of elderly population, thefrequency of dementia or bedridden also increased. Cardiovascularrisk factors partially contributed to the occurrence of thosemiserable conditions. Considering constant expansion of medicalexpense into account, lifestyle modification is most necessary tostop the progress of this social burden. On the basis of thisprinciple, numerical goal of total health promotion is set-up in theareas of nutrition and food, physical activity and exercise,relaxation and mental health, smoking, alcohol intake, health forteeth, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Thispaper refers to the background evidence and concrete figures ofthe plan.