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Objective　Poverty is a significant health determinant. As public assistance recipients experience difficulties in health management, a healthcare management support program to provide health checks has been implemented by welfare offices in Japan since 2021. However, effective approaches to maximize health check rates are limited. This study aimed to identify the impact of telephone navigation on recipients' health check-receiving behaviors, using data from welfare offices in Toyonaka City.Methods　This study included recipients aged 40-60 years who received telephone navigation for health check programs in 2021 and 2022. In 2021, telephone navigation was provided to eligible recipients. In 2022, the recipients were divided into two groups based on their household identification numbers (even/odd). We examined the difference in the health check rate in 2021 depending on whether the navigation system was connected. Additionally, we examined the differences across groups and navigation periods in 2022.Results　In 2021, 32 (7.9%) recipients received health checks. Twenty-six (10.2%) of the 255 recipients and six (4.1%) of the 148 recipients in the navigated and non-navigated groups, respectively, underwent health checks. In the navigated group, health check rates were higher among recipients in their 50s (13.3% vs. 3.1%; P = 0.006), unemployed recipients (13.9% vs. 3.6%; P = 0.014), those who did not receive previous health checks (9.1% vs. 1.5%; P = 0.003), and those who did not receive regular medical consultations (8.3% vs. 0%; P = 0.012). In 2022, 247 and 225 patients were assigned to the odd- and even-numbered groups, respectively, with no differences in their characteristics. During the intervention period, four (1.6%) of the 247 recipients and 10 (4.6%) of the 219 recipients in the odd- and even-numbered groups, respectively, underwent health checks. During the non-intervention period, five (2.1%) and six (2.7%) recipients of the odd- and even-numbered groups, respectively, underwent health checks. Health check rates were higher toward the deadlines. The estimated conditional odds ratio for receiving the health checks by the navigation was 1.35 (95% confidence interval; 0.59-2.93, P = 0.503).Conclusion　Telephone navigation may be effective in some recipients. Meanwhile, targeting recipients with attributes, such as "in their 50s," "unemployed," "received no previous health checks," and "received no regular medical consultations" may increase the response rate. Therefore, policymakers should consider using reliable telephone navigation methods and navigating near deadlines.

Objectives　Some young adults often tend to perceive interpersonal relationships and social interactions as stressful, and as such, avoid them. Seeking help from parents and interactions with neighbors during childhood are known to be important in forming positive impressions of people, thereby influencing help-seeking behavior in adulthood. However, it remains unclear how these experiences are related and how they influence interpersonal relationships in adulthood. This study aimed to investigate whether childhood experience(s) of social interactions in the community has any modifying effect on the association between seeking support from parents in childhood and avoidance of interpersonal relationships in adulthood.Methods　Data pertaining to 1,274 individuals (aged 18 to 39 years) were collected from a questionnaire survey conducted in 2018 by Nagoya City of Japan. Modified Poisson regression analyses were performed to estimate the prevalence ratio of current avoidance of interpersonal relationships depending on the experience(s) of seeking help from a parent (father/mother analyzed respectively) and participating in community events in childhood. Data were stratified according to gender, and adjusted for age, parents' educational background, mother's working status in childhood, subjective recognition of economic status in childhood and seeking help from the other parent. Effect estimates were calculated to evaluate the existence of any modifying effect.Results　No modifying effect of participating in community events in childhood was seen in the association between experience of seeking help from the father and current avoidance of interpersonal relationships, in either gender. Regarding experience of seeking help from the mother, a modifying effect was seen in men. Among men who had sought help from their mother, those who had participated in community events were less likely to avoid interpersonal relationships in adulthood.Conclusion　In order to reduce the tendency to avoid interpersonal relationships in adulthood, childhood experiences of seeking help from the mother and participating in community events may be important, particularly for men. In addition to appropriate parental support, promoting interactive events for children in communities may mitigate the problem of poor social skills later in life.

Objectives　In recent years, the importance of healthcare support for public assistance recipients has been recognized, and healthcare support measures have been implemented for them. This study aimed to investigate the expectations and problems of welfare offices, as well as their requests to the central government and prefectures about the healthcare management support program for public assistance recipients, which has been mandated since 2021.Methods　In November 2019, snowball sampling was used to select 23 welfare offices for sending self-administered questionnaires about the healthcare management support program. Respondents were asked open-ended questions about their expectations and problems regarding the program, as well as their requests to the central government and prefectures. A subsequent interview survey was conducted from November 2019 to February 2020, gathering additional information on the questionnaire survey.Results　We received consent for the questionnaire survey and interview survey from 16 welfare offices (response rate 69.6%). It was revealed that the staff in charge of the healthcare management support program at the welfare office expected the program to improve recipients' health awareness and condition and for it to be applied to other residents in the community. They reported difficulty in developing the implementation system, setting up the indicators and target population, and retaining health professionals. They requested the central government and prefectures to clarify the indicators and the criteria for evaluation, provide reference materials, introduce precedents, communicate and coordinate with welfare offices and related organizations in the community, hold meetings to share information, and secure financial resources.Conclusion　Findings from our study suggest a need to strengthen the cooperation between the central government, prefectures, and local governments and to establish a multilayered system to implement the healthcare management support program effectively in welfare offices.

Objectives　Poverty is a well-known major social determinant of health. Poverty has been conceptualized as multidimensional livelihood difficulties that include material deprivation, financial difficulties, and social isolation. Through their clinical practice, some health care institutions have tried to address social risks among patients. However, standardized assessment tools that can detect patients' livelihood difficulties are not well established. The aims of this study were to develop brief screening tools to assess patients' livelihood difficulties, and to examine the validity and reliability of these tools in Japanese health care institutes.Methods　We used secondary data from a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. The respondents of the survey were adult patients from five hospitals belonging to Japan Health Promoting Hospitals and Service Networks. The questionnaire included 25 questions that assessed patients' poverty. An iterated principal factor analysis with Promax rotation was performed and scales to assess patients' livelihood difficulties were developed. This was followed by an examination of the scales' validity and internal consistency using standardized Cronbach's alpha. Further, we built brief assessment tools by selecting questions that showed high factor loading.Results　A total of 265 participants were included in the study. The response rate was 75.1%. The results of factor analysis suggested that data was affected by patients' financial difficulties and social isolation. Eight questions on the financial difficulty scale and five questions on the social isolation scale showed factor loadings greater than 0.40. The standardized Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.88 for the financial difficulty scales and 0.74 for the social isolation scales. Finally, a brief assessment tools that included two questions from each scale was developed.Conclusion　This tool may be used as a screening tool for patients' livelihood difficulties in the health records of each clinic/hospital, and may help patients effectively receive integrated medical and social care. In order to use this scale in practice, under a well-established community-based integrated care system, it may be necessary to establish a standardized scoring system and diagnostic threshold to verify the generalizability of the scale at healthcare institutes with different characteristics.

In this report, we reviewed the results of RCPC held at the 63rd national congress of the Japanese Society of Laboratory Medicine. The case was a 9th decade female with dementia, who had anemia pointed out on a routine laboratory check. The type of anemia was macrocytic(MCV>130 fL). The serum Vit.B12 and folate levels were markedly decreased. However, her anemia was not improved despite supplementation with Vit.B12 and folate (data on MCV were improved). The WBC increased gradually, but she subsequently died. Laboratory data were assessed by three doctors (DN, NM, and TT: blood cell counts, smear morpholo- gy of peripheral blood cells, and clinical chemistry, respectively). They diagnosed the patient with a hema- tological disorder, probably neoplastic hematological diseases; however, it was very difficult to make a further clinical diagnosis because of the necessary data not presented at this meeting. The final diagnosis was acute myeloid leukemia (AML-M4). The direct cause of death was rupture of her spleen due to the massive infil- tration of neonlastic cells. rReviewl.